


Maybe We'll Make It

by lc2l



Series: Caesars Palace [2]
Category: American Idol RPF
Genre: Demons, M/M, Magic, Threats of Violence, demon binding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-11
Updated: 2013-08-11
Packaged: 2017-12-23 03:51:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/921664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lc2l/pseuds/lc2l
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kris had memorised the Sacred Ritual of Demon Binding by the time he was eight years old. He had the initial commands and the warnings down by ten.</p><p>What no one ever told him is what he's supposed to do with the demon now he's bound it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maybe We'll Make It

**Author's Note:**

> So two years ago I wrote a fic called Caesars Palace on a little community called [Kradamadness](http://kradamadness.dreamwidth.org) and everyone was really nice about it because everyone at kradamadness was always really nice about everything (hi! <3) and people were asking for more.
> 
> At the time, I did not have more outside of a few random thoughts in my head about petulant demon teenagers and feeding them snacks. Thanks to prompts from the kradamadness folk, the random thoughts started coalescing into ideas and a lot of fic requests got abandoned as the ideas stopped being short scenes and started taking on the shape of a longer fic.
> 
> Two years later, I have finally written that longer fic.
> 
> So this is for Kradam bigbang 2013 and for everyone who asked for scenes aaaages ago and for [akavertigo](http://akavertigo.livejournal.com/) who encouraged and made awesome art and is generally a terrible enabler. <3
> 
> Also all the love and thanks to [croissantkatie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/croissantkatie) for beta-ing the sprawl into something which had proper grammar and spelling and real words <3 you are amazing and lovely always
> 
>   
>   
> [Art master post](http://the-kitchen-ink.livejournal.com/38642.html) by the incomparable [akavertigo](http://akavertigo.livejournal.com/)  
> 

Kris's grandma could go into endless detail about the Sacred Ritual of Demon Binding. She could recite the Basic Commandments Required for Survival by heart backwards and wouldn't rest until everyone else could do. She repeated over and over that you can only save yourself for A Maximum of 1000 Days, and should make every effort to do so.

What Kris's grandma never so much as mentioned, was what you were supposed to do with the demon once you'd bound it.

Kris leaves Adam in the living room. He looks out of place, hair swept back and spiked leather jacket clashing with the cosy family sofas. He's too big, too bold, even without horns and bat-wings he's too much for the Allen Family Home.

Kris shouldn't have brought him here. If he had his way, there wouldn't be a demon in the same country as anyone he loved, but now he's brought one onto their doorstep.

"Don't hurt anyone," he says, for what must be the millionth time since he woke up in Vegas and could no longer pretend the whole thing was a crazy dream. "And don't—don't freak anyone out."

Adam arches one eyebrow at him, as though he realises that that's impossible. Adam has to obey him to the limits of his own power, but Kris suspects 'freak out' is vague enough that Adam can ignore it if he wants to.

"Just stay here," Kris says, pointing to one of the sofas. "Sit."

He definitely remembers Adam speaking in the hotel room—death threats, flirtation, any manner of unpleasantness in between—but since they left the casino so Kris could fork out almost the last of his savings on two new plane tickets home, Adam hasn't said a word.

He's planning something, but Kris can't exactly order him to stop thinking. "Don't hurt anyone," he says instead, walking out the room backwards like Adam might jump as soon as he looks away.

His Mom is in the kitchen, she looks up when he comes in and then drops the knife she's holding and crosses to hug him tightly. Then, because she's his Mom, she starts telling him off. "And where have you been? We get a call from Cale to say he lost you last night during the bachelor party celebrations but you texted him to tell them you'd catch a later plane with no mention of where you were or what you were doing and no phone call to your family to let them know that you were alright. Not exactly the behaviour of a best man."

Kris holds her a little tighter, like he can hold onto the hug right through what he has to say and beyond. "I know, I'm sorry. I didn't know what to say."

She pushes him back to look him up and down. Kris is very glad he spent the time at the casino sink washing all the blood off his shirt and also that the sleeves are long enough to hide the bandage on his arm. It's possible he's not quite hiding the shaking well enough though, because her expression softens a little. "It's okay, we just wanted to know you were alright. Did something happen? I think Cale was still drunk when he called me, he just said you went to the bar for a drink and he hadn't seen you since."

"I was—" Kris looks over at the door which has Adam on the other side. "Yeah, something happened." He pulls out a chair and waves at her to sit down. "Do you remember when I was five. You left Daniel and me with Grandma for the afternoon while you went shopping."

Her face goes pale.

"And when you got back," Kris says before she can interrupt. "Grandma had given us knives and we were drawing patterns in red paint on the walls and reciting things and you thought the paint was blood and we weren't ever left alone with Grandma again."

"Kris—"

Kris swallows, staring down at his knees because he can't meet her eyes. "It was all true. The mark, the spell, the... I bound a demon, Mom. He was going to kill me and I just—I panicked. I didn't know what else to try." He holds out his hand, palm up, so she can see the black circle burned into the skin.

At the hospital they hadn't known what to do about it, beyond giving him an ice pack to cool the burning. Between the strange pattern on his hand, the long straight cut on his arm and Adam looming protectively beside his bed; the hospital staff hadn't had any idea how to deal with them.

His Mom reaches out to touch the blackened skin with one finger, like she's hoping it'll wipe off. "The binding only lasts a thousand days."

"I know."

"What happens after?"

Kris shakes his head. "I don't know."

She takes a deep breath. "Start at the beginning."

*

Kris tells the story slowly—from the glittery man at the bar who offered him a drink, the way the man only had to touch his shoulder for his legs to go rubbery beneath him and his head to fill with smoke. The taxi ride where he could only slump in the back seat as the man whispered in his ear what was going to happen to him.

Kris glosses over the details of what the man—who must have been another demon, a lesser one—had said. Skips forward to reaching the Casino, being taken upstairs and shut in a room to wait.

He tells her how the lethargy slowly faded from his limbs and when he had the strength to move he smashed the bathroom mirror on the floor tiles, used a shard to cut his arm so he could inscribe the demon circle on the ceiling over the bed. He doesn't tell her how long he had to wait, how his thoughts blurred more and more as his arm kept bleeding.

He doesn't tell her what he did to get Adam to say 'yes.' Just that Adam did, that the spell caught, that he fell unconscious on the bed with the demon beside him.

He tells her that Adam took him to the hospital when he realised the wound wasn't closing and Kris wasn't waking up. He doesn't look at her face when he says that he needed stitches and a blood transfusion but she grabs his hand tightly which is enough of an answer.

He woke up in a hospital bed with an ice pack strapped to his hand, bandages wrapped around his arm and Adam sitting in a chair next to him. He tells her—with a wry smile—that his first thought was that he didn't have health insurance and couldn't afford it. He told Adam to get him out of there, right there, before they could get his details.

Adam just frowned, and next time the nurses came in Adam snapped, "His insurance stuff is on the table," and just like that, it was.

He doesn't tell her that after the nurse left, Adam leaned over Kris and whispered, "The spell lasts one thousand days. When that's done, you're going to wish I'd killed you last night."

His hand is shaking in hers though, his mind thinking—over and over—that a thousand days is less than three years. He's thinking he'll never be twenty eight. He'll never marry, never have children, he's got three more years and he's going to spend them with Adam, stopping him from hurting anyone.

He's never going to get his life together enough to see if maybe it could've been worth something.

His Mom squeezes his hand gently and he pulls himself back into the moment. The insurance papers checked out, they got a taxi to the airport and he spent the last of his savings on the two plane tickets home.

"We won't stay for long," Kris says. "I need to get some things, pack a bag. I don't want him near you, I don't want him near anyone."

She takes his second hand. "He's bound, Kris. You can control him."

Kris shakes his head. "He looks for loopholes in everything, you have to be constantly alert and I can't—I won't put you through that. I'll take him away, I'll remember to call. He's—I don't know how much power he's got or what he can do, but I'm going to learn." He looks away from their hands for the first time and up at her face. Her eyes are red, cheeks damp. "Maybe he can do some good."

She lets go of his hands and pulls him into a hug with a sob buried against his shoulder. Kris wraps his arms around her, holding on for a long moment. "A thousand days, Kris. I don't want to miss them."

Kris blinks fiercely before he can start crying too. "I know. But I've got to try." He pulls back, holding her at arms length. "We'll stay tonight. Maybe—if I can understand it, if I can be sure he's safe—we'll visit. But not yet."

*

If it could be done, Kris wouldn't let Adam see his parents at all. He has to resist the urge to stand between Adam and his Mom, completely blocking both their views like he can protect her at all. As it is, he can only reach for her hand as Adam looks her up and down like he's preparing to pounce.

"We're leaving in the morning," Kris says. "Until then you have to be good. Don't break anything, don't threaten anyone. Don't hurt anybody."

Adam tilts his head to regard Kris for a moment, then turns back to his Mom. "I wouldn't dream of it," he says, predatory grin morphing into a polite smile as he stands up and walks over to hold out a hand. "Adam Lambert."

If Kris thinks back, he can just about remember seeing that name splashed across posters on the front of the casino he was taken to.

His Mom seems a little flustered, a little confused, but she doesn't drop her guarded look as she takes his hand. "Kimberly Allen."

Adam's smile widens, and he straightens his leather jacket a little—Kris could've sworn that as he did so several studs and buckles melted back into the fabric. "So," he says. "What's for dinner? Would you like a hand in the kitchen?" He leans in a little, like he's going to share a secret. "I was once enslaved to cook dinner for a king. One thousand days and nights of the finest food that has ever touched a human's lips."

"And what happened when those days were up?" Kris cuts in.

Adam's smile gets a little softer, like he's recalling a fond memory. "He ate the finest meal that this world has ever known, tastes and smells that cannot even be imagined. Fruits from other worlds with juice so sweet it melts on the tongue and flows down the throat like silk. He ate the greatest meal that has ever graced this pit of a world and every mouthful burned like fire but it was so good he couldn't stop and he burned from the inside out."

Kris's Mom steps back, pulling the hand that Adam shook back like something burned her. "I—no. I won't need your help."

Kris squeezes her other hand tighter then lets go. "We should go upstairs. I need to pack tonight if we're leaving first thing."

Adam keeps his eyes fixed on Kris's Mom until Kris all but drags him away. "I told you not to freak her out," he hisses. "What was that?"

Adam laughs, bends his head down so Kris can feel Adam's breath against his skin. "You asked." His breath is cold, like it's coming from the mouth of a dead man.

It sends a long shiver down Kris's spine.

*

Kris has an old college backpack in his closet. It's not much, but on the plus side he doesn't need to plan in the long term anymore. He can cash in all his savings, stop worrying about saving up for a house, a car, kids. As he pulls clothes off shelves, he can't help being aware of Adam prowling the borders of the room. Every time he stops—to scan his eyes across Kris's CD collection, to press a hand to the CD player which has been broken for months—Kris tenses up, waiting for him to speak or smash it or do _something._

Adam pauses at a framed photo of Kris and Katy and Kris drops the bag, crossing the room to slam the photo frame down. "Don't."

Adam has let his human glamour drop a little since coming upstairs, when he smiles Kris can see every tooth curves to a rough point. "Do you want to know how many people the king invited to his final meal? How many of his brothers, his children, his friends. They must have invited half the kingdom." He drags a nail that's curved into a talon across a chest of drawers. "The children started dying first. That's when they knew what was going on, but by then everyone had taken a bite and once they'd started, they couldn't stop. They didn't want to."

Kris takes the photo frame away, pushes it down to the bottom of his bag. "I liked it better when you didn't talk."

Adam turns, leaning against the drawers to watch him. "I once spent a thousand days leading an army across what you now call Europe. I followed their leader faithfully to the last second, and then I threw him in with his men and filled their hearts with fury."

Kris focuses on packing. Alarm clock, might need that. Spare pair of sneakers. Boxers, however many he's got that are clean. A spare pair of jeans. Everything he picks up, he catalogues—when would he need it, why—before deciding where to put it.

"I watched them tear him down into shreds before turning on each other. Ten thousand men casting aside swords and shields to pull their comrades apart with their bare hands."

He picks up things he would never take, thinks through everything like he might be able to shut Adam's words out of his ears. He has a large, hardback Bible with colour pictures but he sighs and puts in back in favour of a palm-size paperback copy with writing barely larger than a pin head.

"You should've seen the bodies. Bodies piled up ten high, corpses missing limbs, missing eyes. And the people left alive as the magic drained out of them, left to clutch at stumps and to stumble over people they'd killed. I watched them run to the river to wash the blood out from under their fingernails and the water ran red as they approach-"

"Shut up!" Kris shouts, spinning around. "Stop, just stop."

Adam's words cut off like muting a television. His mouth forms a word, like an experiment, and nothing comes out. Kris is shaking, holding a pair of socks in one hand and a phone charger in the other and staring at Adam who is leaning casually in Kris's room, who smiles when he sees Kris looking at him. Smiles like a shark, scenting blood.

Kris swallows, turns to pack both items in the—already nearly full—bag. "You can talk," he says, so quietly it seems like Adam shouldn't be able to hear.

"What I do to you," Adam says. "Will be far worse."

Kris takes a deep breath, picks up a watch he always forgets to wear and tosses it in the bag. "I don't have an army, and I can cook my own food." He looks up, forcing himself to meet Adam's gaze.

Adam's eyes flash red, his smile gone. "I'll think of something," he says, then turns to go back to examining every inch of Kris's room.

Kris hesitates when Adam reaches for a photo of Cale, but forces himself to turn back to the packing and after a moment Adam puts it down and moves on.

*

Kris's alarm goes off at dawn. There's a faint amount of light creeping through the cracks in the curtains, and his arm is throbbing with pain like the wound is newly-stitched all over again. The hospital painkillers must have worn off, he has a prescription for more but it's a moot point because he can't afford to fill it.

He rolls over—with a small wince—and sees Adam's eyes wide open and looking up at him. Sometime during the night, Kris's floor has grown a mattress, silk sheets and a menagerie of pillows that all fade back into carpet as Adam sits up.

Kris had missed dinner in the end, he snuck down after Adam was asleep—if Adam slept at all—to give his Dad a hug and eat a few mouthfuls of spaghetti and meatballs. He didn't want to introduce Adam to anyone else, not if he could help it.

Adam didn't wake up when Kris slipped back into the room—stepping over his legs to reach the bed—or if he did, he didn't show it.

Now he looks at Kris, eyes back to their normal not-quite-human-enough shade of blue. As the bed fades, the leather jacket reforms across his shoulders—this time the shoulders are a forest of spikes up to an inch high, the waist and arms belted with heavy silver buckles and there are rings wrapped around his fingers that look heavy enough to knock a man unconscious with a single punch.

Kris looks away first, picks up clean clothes from next to his bag and pulls them on before getting out from under the bedcovers. His second-best pair of jeans are a little tighter than his normal pair but he didn't almost die in them, so they're preferable. "So," he says, breaking the loaded silence between them. "We never talked about what you can do. You can change your appearance, you can create things. What else?"

Adam stretches one hand out before him, his fingernails pulled back to normal length and flashing from red to blue to _universes spiralling down with stars a thousand miles away_ to jet black. "I can put thoughts in the heads of humans," he says. "I can sense my own kind. I can twist the flow of time to suit myself. I could make it so you wake up every night screaming from nightmares and I could make it so you never wake."

Kris blinks. "Go back to twisting the flow of time."

Adam's mouth twists into a scowl even as he starts to explain. "Say you needed insurance papers. Maybe you had them in the past, maybe you'll get them one day. I can push the timelines around, make it happen when I need it to instead of when it does."

"And you can do that to anything, any time?"

Adam looks for a minute like he might claw his own throat out, but he says, "I can't do anything that might change someone else's life and I can't go against your wishes to do it. Such is the nature of being bound."

Kris looks over at him and remembers last night when he asked what had happened to the king—going up the stairs what had Adam said? _'You asked.'_

"Can you lie to me?" Kris asks.

Adam gives him a look sharp enough to cut. "If you ask me a direct question, no."

Kris swallows. "Are you going to kill me?"

"In nine hundred and ninety nine days," Adam says. "Yes."

Kris nods. They're two nights and one day down, Adam is probably counting down the seconds. It's time to get away. "I'm going to take a shower," he says. "And then we're leaving."

Adam stands up, stretching so tall his hands brush the ceiling. "If you think you can get out of this," he says. "You're wrong. No one has ever bound a demon and survived."

Kris slams shut the bathroom door.

*

The rucksack is heavy, but not impossibly so. Kris has probably forgotten about a thousand things, and once they get into town the first thing he'll have to do is go to a bank to transfer all his savings accounts into money he can actually access. Goodbye any hope of finishing college.

He wants to go see Katy and Cale—if he can't see anyone else, they at least deserve a proper goodbye—but he can't leave Adam with his parents and he can't present Adam to anyone else he loves.

Adam is standing by the window, looking out over their tiny yard and their neighbours who Kris barely knows beyond 'hi there' but who might die just because Adam was looking.

"We need to go," Kris says.

Adam turns, the sunlight catching gold highlights in his hair and making it flicker like flames. "You're not taking your guitar," he says.

Kris had spent a good half hour the previous night staring at his guitar case and trying to justify taking it. Telling himself that he could totally lug a full size acoustic in a hard case halfway across the country with a demon in tow. Eventually he'd had to admit that it wasn't going to be possible. "It's a little big."

Adam rolls his eyes, walks over to it and picks the case up like it weighs no more than a football. He holds it flat in the palm of one hand, then throws it into the air.

Kris barely has time to blanch forward and open his mouth to tell 'be careful' before the case is flying higher and higher and shrinking smaller.

It falls back into Adam's hand roughly the size of a ukulele. Kris blinks down at it. "Is it—"

"It'll grow when you take it out," Adam shrugs, tossing the case over to him and turns away like nothing happened.

Questions flash through Kris's head, starting with _what_ and going through _why would you even do this?_ There doesn't seem to be any reason he can see, unless Adam is planning to kill him through music.

Kris's CD collection fills one shelf and his guitar is pretty cheap—how could Adam know that music is to Kris the same as food to that king?

A thousand questions come to mind, but Kris remembers Adam's eyes growing darker the more questions he asked last night, so he swallows them all down. "It's a shame you can't do that to yourself, save me from buying bus fare for two."

Adam laughs, low and dark. "Your ancestors used to keep us in lamps, Kristopher. They would rub the side when they wanted our _services_ and we would oblige." He smiles slowly, looking over at the miniature guitar case. "When their time was up, we swapped places and forced them inside instead. They didn't fit anywhere near so well."

Kris picks up an old guitar strap, attaching it to the miniature case so he can sling it over his back. "I suppose that means I'm buying you a seat. We should get moving."

"Don't I get to say goodbye to your parents? I'd hate to think it'll be a thousand days before I get to see them again."

Kris ignores him. "We need to get to the bus station."

"I used to know a sorcerer who commanded a demon to take him across the globe in half a second."

"And I'm sure you had a lot of fun killing him too," Kris says, pulling his sneakers on. "We're taking the bus."

*

There's a greyhound bus station twenty minutes away, but Kris stops off in the centre of town—just outside the library. Adam laughs when he sees it, laughs even more at Kris's face.

"You said lamps," Kris says. "There are stories about that, it stands to reason there'll be more stories about your kind. Someone must have defeated you before."

"Sorcerers," Adam clarifies. "Ancient, wise, far more powerful than some kid who saw a picture of a demon circle on Wikipedia and thought he'd try a bit of binding." He leans back against the wall. "I don't remember the scene in the Disney movie where Aladdin set the demon free and it killed him. Maybe they couldn't think of a good rhyme for 'massacre'."

"I preferred the creepy silence," Kris says, heading towards the doors anyway.

Adam follows him. "Are you going to _order_ me to shut up? Your wish is my command, and all that jazz." He leans his arms against Kris's shoulders, singing softly into his ear. "You ain't never had a friend like me."

Kris shrugs him off, biting back the 'go away' that threatens to slip out. He has to keep Adam close, and he has to keep Adam safe and it shouldn't matter how uncomfortable it is to know that someone has to do whatever you tell them. Adam isn't safe left to decide for himself.

Surely free will becomes less important when someone's going to use it to hurt people. There are times when taking away someone's choices are justifiable. Kris has to get over himself and remember that. "Don't hurt anyone," he says, more out of habit now. If there's one command he's comfortable giving, it's that one.

"You are so _boring,_ " Adam whispers into his ear, wondering over to a bookshelf. "Back in the day, people bound demons to raze cities and burn their enemies where they stood. They raised demons from the depths of Hell to tear their foes into a thousand pieces. They fed us on the blood of virgins and innocents." His fingernail catches the edge of the book, tearing the leather spine. "What did you bind me for?"

Kris sits down at a search computer and tries to stop looking at Adam. "To stop you doing all of those things."

" _Boring,_ " Adam says again, turning to walk behind a shelf and disappear from sight.

Kris takes a deep breath, and clicks into the search box.

_Demons, genies, magic, binding._

He scrolls through lists of fantasy and science fiction, astrology and legends, all the while listening intently to the sounds of whispers and rustling pages, waiting for the sounds of screams.

*

The first bus leaving the greyhound station is going to Nashville, so that's where they go. Kris's rucksack goes in the overhead storage, the bag of library books that he'll never get a chance to give back goes under the seat. He puts Adam by the window, like Kris will be any kind of barrier if Adam decides he wants to start attacking everyone on the bus.

Unfortunately, this puts Adam on the same side as Kris's arm. Kris has _1001 Arabian Nights_ in his lap but he can't focus on the words because Adam's fingers keep twitching sideways towards the tightly wrapped bandage.

Adam himself is sitting staring out the window, eyes darting to every person the bus passes—fixing on them until they disappear from view—his gaze slow and steady like he's preparing to pounce. He doesn't seem to realise his hand, unless he's doing it intentionally to creep Kris out.

Kris tries to focus on the words again, but his eyes are caught by Adam's tongue flashing out to lick his lips just a little as they drive past a crowd of people queuing up beside a door.

"Are you alright?" Kris asks, closing the book around his finger.

Adam turns away from the window. His eyes are darker than before, more of a midnight than sea blue. "I don't suppose you were planning to feed me."

Kris looks out the window at the crowd of people, then moves his cut arm a little further from Adam. "How long can you go without blood?"

"Oh, forever," Adam says. "I'm immortal, you see. It's just unpleasant for all involved."

Kris swallows. "You're not allowed to hurt anyone."

Adam rolls his eyes, slumping back in his seat and tilting his head up to the ceiling. "You mentioned that. You really have no idea what demons are _for_ , do you?"

Kris shrugs. "I figure no one is 'for' anything. What we can do doesn't define who we are, what we choose to do does. That's what matters."

Adam laughs, a cold sound that curls though the hairs on the back of Kris's neck. "And if I choose to kill your parents and your friends and make you watch every second. What does that say about who I am?"

Kris opens the book back on his lap, like he can shut Adam out. "I have a thousand days."

"Nine hundred and ninety nine," Adam says, drawing each syllable out like a delicious morsel. "And counting."

He laughs again, the sound echoing like screams in a churchyard. The people in the seats around them all stand up to move elsewhere. Kris focuses on the words in the book, shutting out Adam's fingers inching closer to his arm and Adam's voice keeping up a low stream of what happened to his previous owners.

Of what he's planning to do to Kris.

*

Adam hates Nashville. In platform boots and blue glitter eyeshadow, he sticks out on every street he walks down. He hates the tiny, cheap motel where the water never runs hot and the neighbours have the loudest sex imaginable on the other side of very thin walls.

If pressed, Kris would admit that he wasn't a fan either. He has to walk down to the roadside to call home without Adam listening in. The shower switches from boiling hot to ice cold apparently at random while you're standing in it. He'd had some idea on the bus that maybe he'd be able to play music in Nashville, get a gigging slot and pay his way that way. Unfortunately every college student in the US with an acoustic guitar seems to have had the same idea.

Kris does a few open mics, collecting tips in a beer glass. He tries to get proper bookings, but Nashville is full of guys with guitars and a handful of song lyrics collected in old notebooks. The one barman that seems to be considering him ends their conversation abruptly as soon as Adam—spikes running down the back of his jacket, hair streaked red—steps out from the shadows behind Kris.

"We need money to get out of here," Kris says, sitting on one of the ratty old beds with his guitar—none the worse for being shrunk into a miniature case—resting in his lap. "In case you've forgotten."

"You think Aladdin ever had to beg drunk assholes for tips to buy bus tickets?" Adam is creating small fires in the palm of his hand and running his fingers through the flames. "You think the ancient all-powerful sorcerers spent three weeks in Nashville?"

"Maybe if you dressed down a little, they'd accept you more."

Adam snorts. " _Maybe_ ," he drawls. "Maybe I should walk down the street with horns and a tail, see if they can shun me more for being a demon than for being gay. _Maybe_ I should kill you in your sleep and tomorrow morning the streets will run with blood. _Maybe_ I should click my fingers and we can catch another three day bus ride out of here."

"You can't make money," Kris says.

Adam raises one eyebrow at him. "If you commanded it, oh lord and master, I could create chest of gold and jewels beyond your wildest dreams. The money of a thousand bank vaults would fall in waves at your feet."

Kris sighs, reaching over to put the guitar back in its case. Adam's flashes between sarcastic reverie and cool threats are unpredictable and impossible to follow but if he starts on one, the other always follows. Kris closes the clasps over his guitar, resigns himself to the knowledge that whispered tortures are going to haunt him into sleep.

"I don't want you to fuck over the national economy today, thank you." He's been learning. Direct questions Adam has to answer, and hates. Orders Adam has to obey, and also hates. Kris avoiding both, making casual remarks and trying to be polite Adam seems to loathe with an intense passion. But Kris feels better about them. "I'll try to get a bar job tomorrow."

Adam snorts and lies back on his pillows. "I once served a queen who demanded I bring her the finest drink ever served."

Kris reaches for his toothbrush. "One day you're going to run out of stories."

Adam smiles, watching the flames in his palms creep up his arms like snakes. "Not before you run out of days, Kristopher."

That night Kris falls asleep to whispered tales of the queen's court, of endless parties and rivers running red wine. Of a wild hunt of girls and women running down deer, wild boar, and eventually each other in a forest full of shadows and flashing red eyes.

He's starting to get accustomed to nightmares.

*

Nashville has no end of bars. Kris starts at one end of town with Adam at his shoulder—in skin tight black jeans and a yellow and black striped hoodie. He's not sure if this is supposed to be Adam dressing down or not—there are fewer spikes, but Kris imagines they wouldn't sit as well in the hoodie.

Also Adam is still wearing four inch platform boots which to Kris—in his oldest, softest pair of sneakers—look like the most uncomfortable shoes imaginable. A thought backed up by the fact that only six bars in, Adam leans closer and says, "Are you planning to do this all day?"

It's barely eleven, and so far no one is hiring and if they were, no one wants to hire a kid with no experience to speak of. It doesn't help that he has bags under his eyes from the endless nights of nightmares and very little sleep. He's stumbling a little on the pavement, Adam keeps having to reach forward to pull him out of the way of people, lamp posts and—when Kris accidentally trips into the road—cars.

Adam's fingernails get more like talons every time they press into Kris's upper arm.

"There's got to be a vacancy somewhere," Kris says. "We just have to keep looking."

Adam's face twists into a scowl, and he lets out a low infuriated noise like Kris's entire existence is ruining his life which, hey, is probably true. "What is the _point,_ " he hisses, tugging Kris out of the path of an old woman with a walking stick and snarling at her when she dares to double-take at his appearance. "Of binding an all-powerful demon just to make it follow you around like a fucking _puppy._ "

Kris shrugs, pushing into the next bar. "I never told you to follow me."

Adam slams the door shut. "Do you know what would happen to me if you died, _Kristopher?_ " The bar is empty, no one at the tables and no one behind the counter. Adam stalks past Kris to look at a list of employee photos on the wall.

"No," Kris says.

That pulls Adam up short, he turns away from the wall to examine Kris, like he thinks Kris might be lying. He seems to decide Kris is telling the truth, though, because he just throws up his hands and goes back to the wall. "Let's keep it that way."

Kris opens his mouth to ask, then closes it again. Somewhere behind the bar a phone rings and a very harried looking woman in a white apron balancing three trays of glasses appears from the back, juggling her burdens down onto the counter so she can pick up the receiver.

Kris waves a greeting and she nods distractedly, waving to one of the bar stools in front of the counter. "Uh huh," she's saying on the phone. "That's great, yeah, no I'm happy for you. We'll work something out. Come in later, we'll celebrate." She hangs the phone back on the receiver and looks up at Kris. "If you want a drink, make it snappy. I've got a million things to do before noon and my afternoon shift just got a record deal so we won't be seeing her again."

"Actually," Kris says. "I'm looking for a job."

The woman looks him up and down then laughs. "When can you start?"

Kris shrugs. "I'm not doing anything now."

She tosses a tea towel in his general direction. "These glasses need stacking, there's more in the back to wash. Aprons in the back cupboard, notepads in the box by the oven. Start with the cleaning, I need to call an agency to see how much of a fortune they're going to charge me to hire a bouncer on short notice."

Kris pauses, looking over at Adam. "I might be able to help out there."

*

"Thank you," Kris says that night, lying on his bed in the darkness and listening to Adam breathe.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"The girl who got a record deal exactly when I needed a job. You were looking at the pictures of the staff, you're not exactly subtle."

Adam scowls. "It must have been a coincidence," he says. "And I had no intention of trailing you through every bar in town. It wasn't for _you._ "

"Still," Kris says, rolling over onto his back so he can only see Adam as a shadow out of the corner of his eye. "Thank you."

Adam doesn't reply, doesn't say anything as Kris drifts off into sleep.

*

Kris ends up at the bar most days, working the afternoon shift with Crystal who remembered to introduce herself three hours into Kris's first shift. Kris starts just before the lunchtime rush, spends three hours running up and down the room to take people's orders, deliver plates out from the chefs in the kitchen. He then spends an hour doing the washing up before joining Crystal on the bar for the afternoon crowd, coming in for a drink and a chat.

Those are the quiet times, they both stay mostly behind the counter occasionally popping out to take someone's order or deliver a drink but mostly just leaning on the wooden bar pulling pints and sharing stories. Kris tells her about dropping out of college, about Cale's stag night and how he thought that Vegas would be a last blow out, a last week of ignoring plans and just going with the flow before he went home and started thinking seriously about his future.

He looks over at Adam, sitting at a table in the back with his feet up, and says that the only thing he discovered is that he really needed to get out of Arkansas.

Crystal smiles at that one. She inherited the bar from her parents, she explains. As their sole surviving heir when they both got involved in a bus crash. She says Nashville's great for the music, but it's hard to keep staff longer than a few months. It's a city full of drifters. "Take you," she says, pointing to his chest with a drink stirrer. "You got off the bus a week ago, maybe? Two weeks? How long are you planning to stay?"

Kris shrugs. "I don't know. Adam hates it here."

Her eyebrows do something complicated along her hairline. "Oh," she says, her smile saying that somehow everything has started to make sense. "Oh, _Adam_ doesn't like it."

Kris feels himself starting to turn red. "I didn't mean—not like that. It's just that he's sticking with me for the moment."

"Uh _huh,_ " she drags out, in a way that says she doesn't believe him at all. "I mean I see where you're coming from, he's a bit much for me but if that's what you're into he's definitely got something."

All the way across the room, far out of normal human hearing of Crystal's hushed comments, Adam smirks. Kris swallows and definitely doesn't think about a hotel room in Vegas, Adam's hands running across his chest and down under his jeans, wrapping around him.

It was a trick, a trap, a last ditch attempt to save his own life that wouldn't have worked if he hadn't let himself _want_ it, just a little.

"You can deny it all you want," Crystal says, reaching over his shoulder to grab a glass for the latest customer. "But if you keep looking at him like that, he's going to figure it out."

Kris shakes his head, tugging his gaze away from the way the black jeans cling to Adam's legs resting on the bar table, away from the smirk playing around Adam's lips. "He knows."

*

Adam doesn't say anything when he comes over to officially clock in the start of his shift. He spends the night on the door while Kris takes drink orders and helps the entertainment—a girl with a banjo and a boy with an acoustic guitar—to set up and tune. He hasn't yet asked Crystal about playing, but he knows that she's had staff on the stage before and at least one got a record deal without Adam's intervention.

He's working up to it. He casually mentions that he's still thinking about going on mission but he wouldn't be able to take his guitar. (He also wouldn't be able to take Adam, but he doesn't say that.) When one of the kitchen staff says they should all go out for karaoke, he drops that he's a singer. He doesn't miss that Adam's face lights up a little at the suggestion.

At the end of the night Adam meets him by the bar, cunningly timing it every time so he arrives after the money has been counted and the glasses have been washed and stacked away so that he doesn't get roped in to help. Normally he spends the whole walk home hating Nashville and everyone who came into the bar. He takes care to pick up on anyone Kris spoke to, anyone who might have stuck in Kris's mind and drops them into conversation, 'the _boy with the black cowboy hat, I could kill him.'_

Sometimes he offers trades. The girl in the red skirt, if he can kill her maybe he'll let Kris's Mom survive. If he's allowed to burn the couple who sneered down their noses at him when they flashed ID, he'll consider letting Cale off the hook.

But tonight he's silent. He follows half a step behind, walking in Kris's shadow the way he does—a constant demon on Kris's shoulder. The evening wind brushes the back of Kris's neck like a breath, at every curb he pauses and looks back just to check that Adam is still following.

In the motel room, Adam steps past him. His outfit—leather jacket, biker gloves, ripped jeans—fades into yoga pants and a hoodie. In the silence, Kris can hear the soft _swish_ of the magic, like the brush of material. "Good night?" Kris says. An inquiring tone—he's learned—isn't a question.

Adam turns back from his bed to smile at him. The kind of smile that sends every story he's ever told running on a loop around Kris's head, the smile that means Kris will lie awake for hours watching him and trembling. "Not so bad."

That's it. Adam who hasn't shut up since Kris's Mom ruined his attempt at the silent treatment. Adam who gloats or brags or just _rubs in_ every tiny little thing.

Kris wishes he could pretend that Adam was maybe settling a little more, cheering up a bit maybe, but he can't even convince himself. Something else is coming.

That night is when Kris starts having the dreams.

*

They never start the same. Sometimes he's in the bar, in the motel room. Some nights he's in the middle of Arkansas, somewhere he knew from high school like he was in the middle of a normal dream that was just interrupted. Hijacked.

Wherever the dream starts, it ends the same. Adam's hands touch his shoulders, his fingers brush his jaw, his lips press kisses softer than thought across the line of Kris's neck.

Sometimes Adam is clothed, sometimes not. Sometimes he has bat wings that curve around them both, horns nestled into his hair to be caught by Kris's fingers when he runs his hands through it. More often he's human, he smiles like they're just two people. His hand brushes up and down Kris's arm, across the wrist where the scar never is, in the dreams.

His teeth are always sharp. They press against Kris's skin, catch his lower lip, sharp as knives but delicate as a tool, never cutting through the skin.

Wherever they start, by this point there's always a bed. Always the same bed, a four poster with rich red hangings embossed with the casino logo.

_Caesar's Palace._

Kris runs his hands through Adam's hair, kisses Adam back, presses into the sharp teeth. He lets himself _want_ like it's not wrong, like he can have this. He lies back on the bed and this time there is no demon circle on the ceiling, no shard of glass, no claiming the demon for his own.

Just Adam's hands and Adam's lips and Adam's voice whispering _Kristopher_ against his skin like a prayer. Like a spell. Like a curse.

And that's where the dream ends. With Kris on the brink of release, Adam leaning over him as a protector, a lover and Kris arching up towards him, Kris's eyes snap open.

He's back in the room. The moon is shining through the thin curtains, his sheets are soaked in sweat and Adam is sitting up in the next bed reading a book or designing outfits from the soft whisper of magic in the air.

That first night, Kris sat bolt upright, looked over at him and said, "Stop," too fast, too harsh. His voice sounded sharp enough to cut, the command falling from his mouth before he could stop it.

Adam had let his hands fall, the magic fading into the air, and looked at him, his face a mask of bemused curiosity. His head tilting quizzically to the side as though to politely say _'stop what?'_

Kris pressed his fingers against his arm—feeling the ridge that's turning slowly into scar tissue, the more painful areas where Adam cut the stitches out. "Nothing," he said eventually, rolling over to turn his back to Adam. "It doesn't matter."

There was a moment of stillness, and then the murmur of magic resumed in the air behind him. Kris curled up under the covers and didn't think of Adam's hands, didn't think of that night in Caesar's Palace, didn't think of anything at all until he was so exhausted he fell asleep again.

It becomes a pattern. Something else to get used to, something else that he doesn't hate as much as he should.

During the days, Adam stays disconcertingly quiet.

*

Really, Kris's sexuality crisis should have come a lot sooner. He's not even sure if it counts as a crisis, jerking off a couple of times in the shower thinking about a demon who would sooner kill you than kiss you isn't so much attraction as a reaction to too many nights dreaming of the same damn thing.

He leaves Adam in the room to go to the motel's payphone—pretending as they always do that Adam couldn't hear him if he wanted to, that Adam might respect his privacy for a little while. If he had any gay friends, now would be the time to call them. He could call his brother, but Daniel would probably point out that cheerleading is a very macho profession.

In the end, he calls Cale. Even though Cale Mills is possibly one of the straightest straight guys Kris knows, at least they have years of friendship to fall back on and Cale not knowing that Adam is a demon might actually help in the long run.

It isn't until Cale answers that Kris remembers that last time they were face to face was in Vegas, that Kris left Arkansas without looking back. "Hi," comes Cale's voice down the line. "This is Cale Mills. Hello?"

Maybe it would be better if Cale did know about Adam being a demon. Kris turns his palm over, looking at the blackened circle of skin, and forces himself to say _something_ before Cale hangs up the phone. "It's Kris."

The moment of stony silence down the line is almost enough to make Kris hang up and run away right there and then. "How was the wedding?" he asks eventually.

"It would have been better if my best man had been there."

Kris deserves that. Kris totally deserves that and infinitely worse. "I—sorry? There was a... thing." He pauses for a moment, then offers, "I'm in Nashville."

Cale has been Kris's best friend since they were five years old and Cale broke the last blue crayon, forcing Kris to colour the sky in green. Cale was there when Kris started dating Katy, there for the three years of on-again-off-again fighting/dating that followed and he was the only one who managed to stay friends with both of them after the off outnumbered the on and they didn't talk for six months.

"I'll understand if you never want to talk to me again," Kris says, because understanding isn't the same as being okay with. "There was just... stuff. I know your thing was more important."

If Cale stays quiet any longer, Kris is going to just start promising him millions of dollars and any children he may have in future which—hey—will at least be a very small wager if Kris does turn out to be gay.

Then Cale lets out a long sigh—one that Kris recognises from such conversations as 'I think we're off forever,' 'why are you still friends with her?' and the infamous 'I'm thinking about dropping out of college.'

"Couldn't you have waited another two days to have your little breakdown?" Cale asks. "I had to have _Andrew_ up there. I mean, Katy offered to put on a suit and fill in but Sandra's Dad was already halfway to blowing up so we decided to play traditional."

Somehow Kris feels even worse now Cale is talking. "I should've been there. I'm a terrible friend, I should have found a way." Locked Adam up at home, sent him halfway across the world, distracted him _somehow_ for that one day.

"I'm not going to pretend I'm not pissed at you," Cale says, sounding far more reasonable than he should if he is pissed. "But I do know you, Kris. You wouldn't flake on me for no reason. I'm not saying it wouldn't have been nice to get a call before now, something more than 'by the way I'm still alive after abandoning you all in Vegas.'"

"Keep going with the guilt thing," Kris says. "I get it, I deserve it, I'm a terrible friend and a worm and I will owe you forever."

"You definitely owe me forever. And the honeymoon was great, since you asked. We've been home for two weeks now and you're still in Nashville? Your Mom said something about a grand tour of the united states, did you get distracted by a record deal?"

Kris laughs a little. "I wish. It turns out getting places costs money. As does an emergency last minute ticket home from Vegas if you miss your plane."

"Not having a good month?"

Kris looks over at the motel with the shit coloured walls that look like they might fall down at any minute, at the black mark on his palm and his zombie-esque reflection in the glass since he'd back to barely sleeping a wink. "You could say that."

"To what do I owe the honour of a call, then? Your Mom always complains that you never ring, Katy hasn't heard from you since before Vegas. I thought maybe you were hiding from me because of the whole leaving me at the altar thing but you didn't totally punk out on anyone else's wedding day, so what gives?"

"Are you going to rub that in forever?"

"Until I find some suitable way for you to pay me back. Maybe I'll make you sing at our anniversary. Maybe I'll make you sing every year for the rest of your life."

Kris opens his mouth to say that Cale can book him in for the next two years, but then he'll have to find someone else. Unfortunately just thinking it makes his good mood vanish almost entirely. "Yeah," he finds himself saying instead. "If you want."

There's another silence from Cale, thankfully less stony. "Are you okay?"

Kris slumps back against the wall, pushes his blackened palm into his pocket where he doesn't have to _see_ it all the time. "I—no. Not really." He taps his finger against the phone casing. "How did you know you were straight?"

"How did I... know?" Cale seems to be thinking about it. "I just did. I liked girls. Is this—you know I wouldn't care if you were... whatever, right? Katy and I, we wouldn't care. Your parents would be cool."

"No," Kris says, before he can follow that train of thought longer. "No, I didn't leave because—it's complicated I was just... thinking. There was Katy, there was always Katy, and then other girls but now there's—" he bites that sentence off before he can say _Adam._

Unfortunately Cale knows him far better than he should because he starts to laugh. "Wait, is _that_ why your Mom wouldn't tell me why you bought two tickets home from Vegas? Is he a stripper?"

"No!" And here is the reason why he should have called someone else. Cale is _snickering._ "No, it's just—he's not even here for that, I've just been—"

"Are you still _with_ him?" Cale laughs. "You should marry him, I'll fail to show up and Katy can be your best man and then we'll be even."

"I can't, I'm in Tennessee," Kris says without thinking because what he should be saying is _no_ and maybe also _what_ and _not in a million years._ "I mean no, that's not happening. I just, I don't know, I needed to talk to someone. Stop laughing at me."

"Did you miss my wedding to have a sexual identity crisis? You'll forgive me if I don't tell Sandra's father, I think that might push him right over the edge."

" _Cale,_ " Kris says, and he might be pleading a little.

Cale sighs, but he also stops laughing. "Don't freak, Kris. You can like guys, you can like girls, you can like both. Not ending up with Katy didn't make you gay, if this new guy doesn't work out it won't make you straight. We all love you whatever, but I mean love in a strictly heterosexual sense." He pauses. "You didn't run away because you have a crush on me, did you?"

That's enough to make Kris laugh. "No. Sorry to disappoint. So far it's just Adam."

"Ah," Cale says knowledgably. "Adam the Vegas stripper."

"I don't even like him," Kris says. "Or, I shouldn't. He's not a good guy."

"I am going to call Katy and tell her you are dating a Vegas stripper and you like bad boys," Cale says.

It isn't actually a solution to any of his problems, but Kris is smiling more than he thought he ever would again and for the first time his problems seem almost manageable. He can have confused feelings and keep Adam from hurting anyone and do something with his last three years. "You're a terrible human being."

"Serves you right for ditching my wedding." Cale hesitates for a moment. "I have to go, are you going to be okay?"

Kris shrugs. "I'll think of something."

"Call again sometime, less than three months away if you can possibly manage it."

"I'll try. Say hi to Sandra."

"Are you going to call Katy?"

"I'll let you tell her. Tell her I'll call tomorrow."

"Tell Adam if he doesn't treat you right I'll set Katy on him. She's got a mean punch, that girl."

"I remember." Kris says goodbye and hangs up, stands beside the phone for a moment longer, gathering together the strength to go back to the room and face Adam again.

When he gets there, Adam is smirking at him which means he was listening in. Kris shrugs off his jacket onto the floor and sits down on the bed. "So I'm attracted to you," he says, deliberately not looking in Adam's direction. "That doesn't mean you get to be a dick about it."

Adam is silent for a long time behind him. Then, "There was a sorcerer in Japan who commanded me into his bed every night." Kris hears him stand up and walk to the window, waits on the edge of his bed for the next part of the story, the part which involves the man dying in whatever terrible torture Adam cooked up for him.

"Have you ever had sex on silk sheets?" Adam asks.

Kris turns around. Adam is standing by the window, hands holding the frame like he needs to ground himself somehow. "Is it better?" he says, forgetting for a moment the rule about questions.

Adam's mouth twists a little to the side. "I thought so," he says. "At the time." He turns away from the window, the momentary softness to his features vanishing beneath a cold smile. "What was your friend's name? Cale? Was he one of those pictures in your room?"

Kris turns away from him again, reaching down to untie his sneakers. "I thought you were done with the threats."

"I like to watch you squirm," Adam says. "But maybe you're right, maybe there's another way." He waits for Kris to look at him, then runs a hand slowly from his throat down his chest, fingers lingering over his flies.

Kris tugs his gaze away. "You don't have to do this, you can just tell me if you want something."

Adam snorts, his hand dropping from the conspicuous bulge in his too-tight jeans. "I _want_ out of fucking Nashville."

Kris sighs, preparing to say that they don't have enough money and he just needs to work a few more weeks before he remembers that he's _been_ working for weeks.

He reaches for the cheap motel notepad and pen to do some quick sums. His hours, the rate he's been paid, minus whatever they owe for the motel and however much they need for food. He gets paid at the end of his next shift.

It might just be enough.

"I have to tell Crystal," Kris says. "When she finds someone else to take over, we can go."

Adam covers his surprise with a scowl a moment too late. He doesn't say anything as Kris shucks his jeans and ducks under the covers.

"He's dead," Adam throws out as Kris reaches for the light. "The man in Japan."

*

Three dreamless nights later, they leave Nashville. Crystal has a friend who runs a branch of a homeless charity in New York City and she offers them food and a place to bunk in return for helping her out. The plane tickets clear out most of what Kris earned from bar work, but Adam seems happier whenever Kris isn't looking directly at him. So it's probably worth it.

"Adam doesn't like Nashville," Crystal says when they stop by the bar on the way to the airport. "You were right about that one."

Adam has swung onto the stage to say goodbye to the girl with the banjo which mostly seems to involve flailing over the fact that she cut a large amount of her hair off, dyed half of it pink and ditched the male half of her country music duo.

The moments when Adam's attention is wholly stolen by something else are few and far between, so Kris takes the opportunity to ogle a little. "Thanks for helping us out. You've been a lifesaver."

Crystal laughs and pulls him into a one-armed hug. "I was going to say the same for the both of you. You can pay me back by inviting me to the wedding, okay?"

Kris pushes her away, but he's smiling a little when he does it. "I told you we're not like that."

"Let a girl have her fantasies." She reaches under the bar for her car keys. "Is that tiny excuse for a backpack really everything you've got?"

"And the Ukulele," Kris says, holding up the miniaturised guitar case for her to see.

"You must be some kind of miracle packer to fit even one of Adam's jackets in that bag," Crystal says. "But if you're sure that's all you're taking, we'd better be off.

"You really don't have to drive us," Kris says, for approximately the millionth time.

Crystal smiles warmly at him. "But I'm really gonna. So shut your mouth, shoulder your pack and get used to it." She slides one key off the ring and throws it to the girl working the til. "Lock up at closing, don't forget to put the cash in the safe and call me when everything's done."

The girl nods, waving over Crystal's shoulder at Kris. "Look us up next time you're in town."

"Count on it," Kris promises, as Crystal vaults over the bar yelling at Adam. "Come on you lazy ass, you can call Lauren from the road but right now we gotta get moving."

Adam sits in the back of the car, stretches out across all three seats with his arm over his eyes like he's napping. Crystal occasionally glances in the rearview mirror and smiles as though Adam is an innocent woodland creature she's rescued.

Kris occasionally glances back to see the way Adam's hair falls in his eyes and wish he could lean over and brush it back. When Crystal catches him at it, she grins. "You've got it bad, boy."

Kris pulls himself around to face the road before he can see Adam's reaction to that.

*

The plane is hot and overcrowded. There's a baby three rows back who screams at every imagined slight and every time it seems to get louder. Adam is sitting in the window seat, watching the world pass by below them and occasionally turning to say, "Can I kill it? Just a little bit, I promise, it won't feel a thing."

Kris is very glad the elderly couple in the seat behind them seem to be deaf. A happier Adam has turned out to be more talkative, but not always in a good way.

"I'm hungry," Adam says. "Are we nearly there yet?"

Kris rolls his eyes and reaches into his rucksack for the sandwiches. "These were supposed to be for when we landed."

Adam looks at the neatly wrapped pile and sticks out his tongue. "Not that hungry. _Proper_ hungry." He leans in a little closer, to a casual passers-by it might look like he was just resting his head on Kris's shoulder but Kris can hear him _sniffing._ "You smell good. Did I ever tell you how delicious you were?

Kris pushes him away. "You could tell me how long you can go without eating," he says. Sometimes in the middle of a conversation it's hard to remember not to ask Adam direct questions, but Kris is getting better the more accustomed he becomes to the various work-arounds.

Adam pulls away a bit, closing in on himself again, and shrugs half-heartedly. "I don't know."

"I thought you'd been bound before."

"They always fed me. Back then I was regarded as a God, an almighty force to be reckoned with. They garbed me in silk and sat me on thrones and fed me on the sweetest serving boys in the kingdom." Beneath half-closed lids, his eyes slide sideways to fix on Kris. "We were enslaved to set our master's as kings, as conquerors. There was no 'don _'_ t _hurt anyone'_ back then."

"I apologise for my general regard for life," Kris says. "Maybe you want to tell me what you can eat?"

Adam thinks about this for a long moment. "Bad luck," he says eventually. "Misfortune, curses to the heavens, anger, pain, confusion, violence." He smiles, as though at a happy memory. "Blood is best. You haven't tasted anything until you've had blood straight from the vein, still warm right down into your stomach."

"I think I'll get by." Kris opens the pack of sandwiches anyway. "That baby sounds pretty angry."

Adam makes a noise of distaste. "Tastes like baby food. All mushy and unfocused. Now if the plane started to crash..."

"No," Kris says.

"I'd save us before we hit the water."

"And yet my answer stays the same. We can try and find somewhere when we land, a casino or something. There's got to be something in New York City." He leans forward a little to see out the window over Adam's shoulder. "I've never been there, but I suppose you have."

"The city that never sleeps," Adam says. "It's colder than Vegas." He flickers his fingers through the air, trailing the shadow of magic at the tips. "You could rule it. That's what normal people enslave demons for."

"What," Kris says. "Like one day I'm going to rule New York City, so you reach into my timeline and pull it out? Seems unlikely."

Adam smiles. "Historically we just killed people until they went along with it."

Kris sighs and puts the sandwiches back in his bag, pulling out a book as he does so. "Maybe not just yet. I don't know what I'd do with New York once I had it."

"No one ever does," Adam says, turning back to the window. "Your kind are strange like that."

*

Crystal's friend is called Megan. She picks them up from the airport on foot, they take the subway back to her apartment—a few blocks away from the charity centre. The apartment is small, but Kris supposes by New York City standards it could well be a small mansion.

The sofa in the living room folds out into a double bed. She apologises for making them share, but in a winking way that suggests she's spent far too much time talking about them with Crystal.

It's pretty late by the time they reach the apartment. She passes them towels, promises Kris that he can have Friday off work so doesn't have to start until Monday— _'to give you two time to see the city'—_ and then disappears into her bedroom because—as she points out—she _does_ have to work in the morning.

Kris sits on the edge of the bed and watches Adam prowl the perimeter of the apartment, checking the locks, the view out of the window.

"We don't have to share the bed," Kris says. "I mean, you don't sleep so you could just sit in the kitchen or on the beanbag chair or something."

Adam turns away from his examination of the single yale lock on the door. "Scared I'm going to jump you while you sleep?"

"I was mostly thinking you'll be bored," Kris says, choosing his words carefully. "Now I'm worried I should be concerned about the jumping."

Adam doesn't say anything for a moment, then walks over to the other side of the sofa bed and starts kicking off his boots. "You tossed a lot in Nashville. Try to stay still here."

"I sleep a lot better when people leave my dreams alone," Kris says, and Adam has the grace to look a little guilty. Just a little.

"You slept with me once before," Adam says.

"That was less sleeping and more falling unconscious from blood loss," Kris says. "But it's nice to know that it meant something."

Adam laughs a little, lying down flat next to Kris. He's warmer than a human would be, but not by so much that it's uncomfortable. Kris is just thinking that he hasn't slept alongside someone else in years and knowing that is going to keep him up all night when he falls straight into sleep.

*

Adam—in a bid to maintain his reputation as the most expensive person Kris has ever been forced to hang out with—decides that he wants to see a Broadway show. Not just one, in fact, he really wants to see every Broadway show and he wants to see them all as soon as possible.

"If you ruled New York City," Adam says, as Kris walks away from a ticket booth with tickets to Rent and Wicked and a far lighter wallet. "We could go to all the shows."

"Not if you killed all the actors," Kris says, stopping to watch a busker hesitating his way through _Strawberry Fields._

"I could act instead," Adam says. "I was in Wicked, once upon a time. I was supposed to be the understudy, but I killed the star. He tasted like breathmints."

Kris starts walking again, lets the busker pretend he must have misheard. "I don't think killing people will really solve all your problems."

"Will running away really solve yours?" Adam checks his reflection in a shop window, adds a few more red streaks to his hair. "You know slavery is a crime in the United States of America? Or have you decided those kind of basic rights only apply to _humans_. You know, _your_ kind of people."

Kris keeps walking, partly so he can keep his face turned away from Adam. The last thing he needs is for Adam to know how much this question has been keeping him up at night.

Because Adam is intelligent, Adam has thoughts and feelings and impulses. Every day he's more like a human and less like the mindless creature Kris had imagined coming into that hotel room to drain him dry. "We lock people up," Kris says. "To stop them hurting anybody."

Adam stops still on the street, forcing Kris to stop too and turn around just as Adam lets out a cool laugh. "So that's how you're justifying it. And there I was thinking you were playing the 'demons aren't people' card."

Kris shakes his head, though he couldn't say why. "I don't want anyone to get hurt."

"You made the wrong choice," Adam says, like a promise, his mouth curving into a harsh smile. "You haven't called your blonde in a while."

Kris doesn't ask how he knows that Katy is blonde, or how often Adam's been listening into his phone calls. He doesn't ask why Adam's bringing up Katy now, because he knows the answer only too well. "The guys at the bar in Nashville, you're going to kill them too." It's carefully not a question, he doesn't know if he wants an honest answer.

"People die every day." Adam stops on the corner, waiting for Kris to choose a direction. "We could go to Wall Street, there's good eating there."

"And have you crash the stocks of every major company in the US?" Kris pulls the map print out that Megan gave them out of his back pocket. "There's a casino down here somewhere."

Adam sighs, but falls into step behind him. "Maybe I'll starve you to death," he says, vaguely thoughtful as though they could be talking about the weather. "See how you like it."

"A thousand days," Kris says. "And we'll find out."

"Eight hundred and eighty seven," Adam says, flashing him a smile as he pushes past Kris and into the small casino. "Don't think I'm not counting."

*

Megan's charity is based out of a small office a couple of blocks walk from her house. She explains that there's a homeless shelter across the city and a soup kitchen that they open whenever they can afford it but the majority of the administration is done from the office. The place is run by Megan and a man called Anoop who sings Michael Jackson covers while making coffee. Both of them split their time between the home, the kitchen and the office. Since Kris and Adam are lacking in any kind of training or qualifications, they are relegated to the office and occasional evenings drafted in to serve soup.

Kris tries not to get too close, but Southern genes are hard to fight as much as he ducks out of evening events he can't avoid small talk forever. He tells the same stories he told Crystal—the ones that are nearly but not quite true—and dregs up everything he can remember from his semester or so of college to put together spreadsheets to track donations and delegate finances.

He wouldn't say he's happy—he dropped out of business for a reason—but pursuing music in New York City seems like a needle hoping to be found at the bottom of a whole heap of needles. He prefers the soup kitchen to the office, however much he knows that the finances need to be done, spooning bowls of soup and bread to starving children seems far more like actually getting something done.

Adam seems to like New York City. He likes walking the streets at the weekends, can even be convinced to carry a donation bucket when the team goes out on the streets. Kris knows that Megan and Anoop have realised Adam follows Kris everywhere, and he can see them itching to ask but the more he skirts and avoids and talks around the subject, the more it just becomes a quirk of the office that people expect to see.

And Adam—Adam is quieter. If the office is full, he sits on a chair behind Kris's desk and counts money or files paperwork or sits with a glower that dares anyone to try and make him work. If it's only him and Kris around, he might suggest a show he wants to see or a club he wants to go to. Kris has no idea if the lack of threats are a good sign or a bad one—if Adam's planning or plotting or just waiting for his moment.

Kris doesn't dream every night, not of Adam. Some nights he doesn't know if Adam's sending the dreams or if they're just the normal reaction to being around someone like Adam day in and day out.

It's almost like they're settled, almost like they could spend the rest of their lives on Megan's sofa in a constant state of uncertain will-they-won't-they and Kris uses the opportunity to watch. Adam is always bouncier, more active, after they visit a casino or a bookie or anywhere he can drink in the misfortune and resentment of the people around them. On the whole, however, Adam seems to be slowing down. He doesn't sleep, but when Kris wakes in the middle of the night he's usually listening to music in headphones or reading one of Megan's magazines.

He doesn't toy with magic anymore. Kris tries to remind himself that it might be a trick, Adam might be playing a long game to try and be fed again, but it's hard.

It helps that his parents are both firmly on the side of not trusting Adam even slightly. His Mom lets out a long sigh when he mentions that he's trying not to give Adam orders.

"I know you think everyone's good at heart and everyone can be saved," she said, as Kris tried not to think of Adam lying on the sofa bed in the next room throwing a ball from hand to hand and listening in. "But he's not human, Kris. Everything you wish he would stop, maybe that's just who he is. You can't help the whole world."

Which is easy for her to say, halfway across the country with her only experience of Adam being his litany of murders and Kris's desperate need to get his demon away from his family.

What is Kris supposed to do with Adam waking up early in the morning to cook breakfast, begging Kris for three days straight to buy the—horribly expensive—tickets to the _Chess_ tour. Adam's a demon and he's killed people and he still threatens to kill Kris when he remembers, though these days it's more of a casual afterthought like he's suddenly remembered he hasn't given any death threats in a while. Maybe he has a mental to-do list, 'buy groceries, go clubbing, threaten Kris.'

There's something missing and it takes a while for Kris to realise what. They've been in New York City for a month before Kris wakes up in the middle of the night—hard, sweaty, with the dream of Adam slipping out of his grasp—and looks over at Adam sitting in a chair, smiling a little into his magazine like he knows Kris is awake and he can't stop gloating a little. It's that small smile that hits Kris like a wave.

There's no malice in that smile. Like what started as a torture has become teasing. Like somewhere along the line Adam stopped doing it to torment and kept doing it just to see what would happen.

Kris holds still for a moment, watches Adam until Adam realises he's awake, then deliberately stands up and walks through to the bathroom.

He's careful not to wake Megan, but he knows Adam hears him come around Adam's name.

When he steps back out of the bathroom, Adam is lying on the bed with his back to Kris. Kris lies down without a word, and is just drifting off to sleep when Adam says softly. "Eight hundred and fifty days."

Which... yeah. Eight hundred and fifty days.

*

Kris is almost losing track of how long they've been in New York—he's not being paid, and any money they get goes on clubs or shows so he hasn't even started thinking of how they're going to move on—when Megan comes into the office after lunch and slams the door shut behind her so hard Kris's keyboard rattles and Adam jolts upright from the floor.

He doesn't sleep, but he's started 'resting his eyes' for long periods and Kris has no idea what to do about it beyond go out more, feed Adam more. It throws him because Adam complains about everything from the bed he doesn't sleep on to the work he only does when he feels like it to endless rants on the subject of Kris's outfits, which don't even affect him. The idea that something might be affecting him this much, but he's not _talking_ about it is setting Kris even more on edge. He could ask out-right, and risk Adam's intense hatred of having to answer. He could keep asking around the subject and letting Adam bypass the whole topic, changing the subject whenever it comes up.

Kris just needs a good way to convey 'I'm worried about you' without inviting ridicule, threats or forcing a straight answer. If that could be arranged.

Megan slams a pile of papers on her desk, reminding Kris to focus on one problem at a time. "What's going on?" Last he heard, Megan was heading over to the bank to check on the funding for the new shelter the charity was hoping to set up in Los Angeles.

"Nothing," Megan snaps. "Bullshit. Assholes. The usual fuckers."

Kris glances back at Adam, who shrugs, then turns back to Megan. "Bankers?"

"Ugh," Megan says. "I wish it was bankers. No, fucking city fundraising committees." She gives up pretending like she's not going to tell them, walking over to sit on the edge of Kris's desk.

She has to sweep a whole pile of papers and pens onto the floor to do it, but Kris is prepared to sacrifice his stationary. "So there's this party tonight. You know the drill, the city's rich and famous all mill around in a room that costs more than we can raise in a year eating expensive mouthfuls of food and chatting with the representatives of various city-based charities to work out which poor disenfranchised cause they want to throw their spare millions at this year."

Kris can't say he knows the drill, having never been to any such thing, but Adam perked up visibly at the mention of parties so he goes along with it. "Are you going?"

"Hah," Megan says. " _Hah._ Am I going. No, no, I'm not because some _asshole_ decided to give our tickets to 'save the _fucking_ whales'. Kids are starving on their fucking _doorsteps_ and they've decided to save the whales. Do you know how many whales there are in New York City?"

"I'm guessing not many."

"They look fucking great in pictures, that's what whales do. Anyone wanting to splash their generous donations on the front page is going to throw all their money at the whales because they look great in newspapers. The same newspapers that spend every other page demonising the kids we're trying to save." She slams her hand hard against the wood of the desk. "And now we won't even get a _chance._ And we were relying on that funding for the L.A. project, I'm going to have to call the team there and tell them that we won't have the money for another year so we're going to lose the property and the whole volunteering team."

Kris is far less familiar with the volunteering world than Megan, but from the sounds of things all he can think to say is 'that _sucks'_ and clearly Megan already knows that part. He would offer a hug, but she looks like she's still in the stage where she'd rather be punching something. "If they were your tickets, can't you—"

"No," she says, deflating a little. "They aren't allocated until the day, that's why I didn't tell you because I didn't know how many we'd get. Normally we're allocated two or three, this year we get a grand total of zero." She drags a hand back through her hair. "It's just—so _frustrating._ We've been on the verge of L.A. for months and now—"

Kris opens his mouth to offer platitudes or comfort or some genius idea that he hasn't quite thought of yet. "Um," he manages.

Megan shakes her head and sighs. "I'm going to make coffee and try to resist the urge to smash the coffee machine again."

"I don't think Anoop would ever forgive you."

Megan smiles faintly. "He has before," she says, sliding off the desk and heading out of the room. As soon as the door shuts—slightly more calmly than before—behind her, Kris turns his chair around to face Adam. "If only there was someone pretty powerful around who might be able to get a couple of tickets to that event."

Adam leans his head back against the wall and closes his eyes. "I don't do charity work."

"I could order you to."

Adam cracks open one eye to give him a quick look up and down. "You could," he says after a moment. "Go for it."

Damn. Kris taps his foot against the chair, trying to think of something. "Maybe you could find it in your heart, just this once?"

"Nope," Adam says. "What's in it for me?"

Kris reaches for Megan's pile of papers and the flier for the event, scanning the details. "There's a free bar."

Adam nods. "I'm listening."

Kris reads further. "It says gambling tables, you can do your luck thing."

"Uh huh," Adam says, dragging the last sound out and managing to make it sound entirely unimpressed with the whole idea.

Kris sighs and goes for the big guns. "I'll let you choose my outfit."

Adam's grin is all shark as his eyes snap open and he holds out a hand for the leaflet. "Give me half an hour."

"Four tickets," Kris says, holding the leaflet back a little. "And I'm not wearing a dress."

"Done," Adam says, snatching the paper from his hand. "Stay here, don't do anything while I'm gone."

"Don't hurt anyone," Kris throws out after him. Adam spins, offering up a casual salute, and disappears out the door.

He's back in twenty seven minutes with six tickets, complete with QR codes, fraud protection and Megan's charity printed neatly across the top.

"Kris and I will be out this afternoon," he tells Megan, as he passes her the small stack of tickets. "We have to go clothes shopping."

*

If Adam had really had his way, Kris would have been wearing something perfectly tailored. As it is, Adam has forced him into a pair of black jeans that are about three sizes too small and are only just formal enough to fit with the black suit jacket over a white shirt. Adam vetoed every tie in the store—one at a time—and eventually proclaimed that Kris would just have to go without.

Kris could live without the fact that it feels like the circulation in his legs is being entirely cut off and he could definitely live without the fact that sitting down has become a whole exercise in trying to bend his legs.

The fact that Adam couldn't tear his eyes away the whole time Kris was getting dressed, however, Kris thinks he could probably live with. The way Adam's tongue flicked out to lick his lips the moment he thought Kris wasn't looking—thank you to the reflective screen of the television—is definitely something Kris could stand to see again. Several times.

Megan drove them to the party, in her beat-up old ford focus. Her hair is up, she's wearing a truly fantastic dress that she brushes off all admiration of with one hand and a vague 'I pretty much only wear it for this, it just sits in the cupboard gathering dust the rest of the year.'

She keeps thanking Adam, as well. Kris had to rescue him earlier when she managed to corner him in the kitchen for half an hour to tell him how big a deal it was that he'd managed to get the tickets and how she could never repay him enough. Adam had just looked downright uncomfortable and hadn't met her eyes at all.

Afterwards Kris had sat on the toilet seat and let Adam put what he promised would be 'subtle' eyeliner around the edges of his eyelids while Adam said, "She's going to die, definitely."

It sounded far more like a question than it ever had in the past. Kris let it slide.

The man on the door checks his list four times with a frown, but the tickets check out and the scanner reads the code fine so he hasn't really got an excuse not to let them in. They split up inside, Megan is meeting Anoop and Kris has a list of all the rich people he's supposed to be sucking up to for funding.

Megan also wrote him a script, because Kris isn't known for his skill with words unless he's planned them out in detail beforehand and occasionally if he happens to be holding a guitar at the time.

Adam hovers at Kris's elbow for ten whole minutes, throwing longing looks at the room just off the hall set aside as a kind of wannabe dance floor—a few lights, a disco ball and a pulsing beat of trance music for the rising generation of young billionaires.

"You can go if you want," Kris says. "I'm sure you can protect me as easily from across the room as you can playing my shadow over here."

Adam hesitates for a moment, then mutters, "Say my name if you need me," and disappears in the direction of the music leaving Kris to stand awkwardly in the middle of the hall and feel as out of place as possible.

This place has a _chandelier._ The last time Kris saw a chandelier it was through a haze of the bad kind of drugs as he was dragged through a hotel atrium by two men who kept referring to him as 'dinner.'

Probably not the best memory to focus on. He moves instead so he can see through the door to the other room.

Adam is in the centre of the dance floor, a whirlwind of energy that draws every other partygoer close, dancing with him for a moment before the current pulls them away for someone else to take their place. The outfit he finally settled on hugs his legs like a second skin, tailcoat flashing with silver studs and black leather.

He tosses his head back sending glitter trickling from his hair to the floor as the lights catch on his smile and the curve of his throat.

Kris rubs his eyes and turns deliberately back to the bar. Thank god for free alcohol, he knocks back two shots before he can stop to think about what he might actually want to drink. The menu takes up some time, the woman in a low cut blue dress who smiles at him and asks where he's from takes a good half hour and a good few drinks.

She turns out to be from save the whales, Kris feels vaguely guilty about getting on so well with her but they have a bit of a laugh about trying to pitch each other and then she disappears to find someone with money to spare. He watches her go and thinks that Cale was right—he is definitely still into girls—but it doesn't really make a difference now.

He glances around again, his eyes moving automatically to squint at the dance floor. Adam is grinding against a younger man with blonde hair and a lip ring. The light catches on Adam dark-ringed eyes and the flash of black nail varnish in the stranger's hair.

Kris isn't jealous. Adam has had all the time in the world to be interested, and he clearly isn't about to make a move. Just because Kris can't throw it all in and find someone else—just because Kris can't throw someone else into the line of fire, for all the good that running away has done so far—doesn't mean Adam can't pick up boys at parties. He can't hurt them, doesn't mean Kris can stop him liking them.

Kris shouldn't want to anyway. Doesn't want to. There's a difference between acknowledging Adam is attractive and wishing Adam wouldn't get with anyone else. Jealousy would imply emotion was involved and it isn't. It can't be.

Kris reaches for his fourth—fifth?—glass. As his hand curves around it, he can see the blackened skin on his palm, the darkness that reminds him that Adam is a demon and Kris is drunker than he should be.

Naturally that's the moment when the man Kris came to this party to see leans up against the bar next to him. Kris opens his mouth to talk but all his carefully prepared arguments are jumbled up so all he can think to say is 'please give me all of your money.'

He presses his forehead against the cool glass and whispers, "Adam."

There is a slight shiver in the air, as though reality is rearranging itself behind him, and then he can feel the warmth of a figure step up close behind him. "I need to be sober," Kris says.

Adam rests his chin on Kris's shoulder. "I think you should pitch him drunk," he says. "This is a party, everyone's drunk." He blows warm air over Kris's ear. "He's probably drunk."

Kris elbows him in the ribs. "Please."

The fog drops from his brain in an instant and he reaches out to tap the shoulder of the man. "Hi, my name's Kris Allen. I'm here on behalf of a small charity-"

Adam sighs long into Kris's ear, steals his drink and whispers a "boring" that no one else can hear.

He doesn't pull away.

*

Because they're them, the vague truce where Adam steals the olives from Kris's drinks and leans on the back of his chair glaring donators into submission lasts through half of Megan's list, and then Kris makes the mistake of suggesting they take a break and heading back to the bar. Adam orders a cosmopolitan, Kris gets a lemonade.

Adam drains the drink in one, holding it to his lips and tilting his head back so Kris has nowhere to look but the regular swallowing of his throat, the patch of red turning from tooth marks into a bruise. "You've been having a good night," Kris says, before he can stop himself.

Adam puts the glass down, hand moving to his neck like he can't stop it. "So what if I am."

Kris wonders where the stranger is now, if Adam's made _plans_ for after the list is done, after Kris doesn't need him anymore. "Don't go back to him," Kris says, the words slipping out and god he _wishes_ he was drunk because then he'd have some kind of excuse for this conversation.

Adam goes very still, then excruciatingly polite—like he can't quite believe what he just heard. "Excuse me?"

Kris can't look him in the eye.

Adam scoffs coldly. "Right. Three months of pretending that you treating me almost like a human being could ever actually mean anything and _this_ is your breaking point."

"He could have been a shaman," Kris offers, turning to the bar and stealing Adam's second cosmopolitan, like getting drunk after the fact might work as an excuse. "Planning to do the binding spell on you and make you his all powerful servant for all sorts of evil acts and dark magic. Would you want that?"

Adam snorts, waving the bar man over and asking for a line of shots before turning back to Kris. "Okay, three things. First: yes, I would want that. I'm a demon, evil acts and dark magic were both very enjoyable pasttimes before you put me on the saving-puppies-and-orphans brigade.

"Two, no one but you knows that binding spell. No one has known it for _millennia._ It was supposed to have died out, we thought we'd destroyed every last copy and _Three_ , in case you forgot I am _already in a bond_ and I'm pretty sure you can't bind a demon twice."

Kris stares at his fingers around the glass and prays Adam won't notice how red his face is going. "Oh you're _pretty_ sure, are you?" he mutters. "I'll be sure to get that engraved on your headstone: 'Here lies Adam, he was _pretty sure.'_ "

Adam snatches the line of shots from the barman and goes down them, downing each in quick succession and slamming the glasses back on the wood. "I know what's going on here. You saw a cute, brown haired boy. Small, southern, exactly my type and you thought—"

Kris's head jerks up, cheeks painted bright red. "No."

"- I was going to eat him," Adam finishes, waving the barman back over and pointing to the empty cosmopolitan glass. "Even with all your 'don't hurt anyone' commands weighing on my head like fucking lead you thought I would pick up any old twink at a bar and drain him dry."

"No," Kris says desperately, then, "I mean, yes. That's what I was worried about."

"Yeah, everyone's more important than me. I get it." Adam snarls and pushes away from the bar just as his next drink arrives. "Fuck you."

Kris watches him disappear into the crowd, then sighs and turns back to Adam's cosmo, tilting it back to drink. "Keep them coming," he asks the barman, mentally writing off any hope of completing Megan's list tonight.

*

For the first time he's not in Caesar's Palace. He's on Megan's sofa bed, with the blanket that smells faintly of red wine and the creak in the middle that sounds like a cat screeching every time he rolls over in the night. Adam is standing by the bookshelves, in what Kris tends to think of as his halfway stage—his fingernails hooked and clawed like talons, dark red horns poking a little way out of his hair.

He's still dressed in his outfit from the party. The tailcoat has vanished, his knee-high boots are kicked off by the door but the black shirt is still there, the top few buttons undone. The red mark from the stranger has vanished, like it was never there at all.

But then, this is a dream. Kris sits up in bed and watches Adam undo the rest of the buttons of his shirt, even though as soon as he slides it off his shoulders the fabric vanishes into nothing before it can hit the floor.

Then Adam is kneeling in front of him, Adam's hands run across his shoulders. In the dream, Kris is naked save for the old blanket and because it's a dream he's not worried about Megan coming home as he reaches up to lace his fingers through Adam's hair.

His horns are rough, like tree bark that never crumbles. He tastes like berries and vodka and his nails catch the back of Kris's neck as he pulls Kris closer.

Kris has never kissed Adam awake, but as he leans back and Adam follows, without once losing the warmth of Adam's lips and his tongue, he thinks that if Adam is as good outside Kris's dreams as he is inside, Kris might be happy to never stop.

Kris runs his hands through Adam's hair, drags his guitar calluses up and down Adam's horns to hear the way it makes Adam's breath hitch. He presses against Adam's teeth until he's nearly breaking the skin then pulls away, to breathe cool air through damp lips as Adam kisses down his throat.

Kris lets Adam push him onto his back, lets Adam run a hand down his chest to the top of the blanket and back up again. He reaches out to catch the back of Adam's neck and pull him into another kiss, licking out cranberries and lime until Adam just tastes of skin and wet and _Kris_.

When Adam leans in to kiss the side of Kris's neck, Kris runs a hand across the curve of his ear and leans in to whisper against Adam's skin. "This is bullshit."

Adam goes still.

"You think it means less because I'm dreaming?" Kris places both palms on Adam's chest and pushes him back. Adam goes easy, pliable. "Grow up."

Then his eyes are flickering open. The room is dark save for a golden glow under Megan's door. Adam is standing in the doorway, tailcoat in one hand and he's still holding the door like he only just got home. His lip is curled into a half snarl, teeth catching the gleam in a flash of white.

He has one hand on his neck, like in the shadows he might still need to hide the hickey from view. "You're playing the jealous girlfriend and I'm the one who has to grow up?"

Kris glances at Megan's door, but Adam's eyes flash red like a demand for attention. "You could _order_ me into your bed any time," Adam spits. "Order me to _touch_ you."

Kris sits up, the blanket settling in his lap—over his T-shirt and the boxers he fell asleep in. "I could," he says.

Adam's fists clench tighter on the doorframe. "So?"

Kris shrugs, holding himself as steady as he can like he can convince Adam that he's as calm as he wishes he were. "I've made it clear enough that I'm into you. I think the next move is yours."

*****

They've been in Los Angeles for two weeks, and Kris has been sleeping maybe four hours since the end of the party. The building that the charity purchased for conversion had a couple of rooms which weren't being torn apart and rebuilt almost from scratch, and Megan sent them with the promise of a few camp beds and a roof in return for helping with the building.

Adam hasn't said anything to Kris since the night of the party. When Kris manages to silence his thoughts long enough to sleep, he does so without dreaming.

Outside somewhere a police car whizzes past, sending a flash of red and blue onto one wall through the bare window. Opposite Kris is Allison, a local volunteer who is L.A. born and bred and promised them she could sleep though anything. She then winked, but Kris was trying not to think about that.

Allison is all of sixteen years old, a red haired ball of energy who gets dropped off by her parents in the mornings and picked up a few days later when she decides she needs a real shower. (Kris has to wash in a bucket, as far as he can tell Adam doesn't have to wash at all.) Her camp bed was originally in the girls' 'dorm', but she moved it into Kris and Adam's room halfway through the first night because there were no other girls staying on site and sleeping on her own was 'boring'.

Allison could interpret the furniture instructions better than anyone, and spoke fluent Spanish to the elderly woman from the sandwich shop two doors down until she started slipping them all extra fillings and the occasional treat in with their daily food order.

She also—against all odds—gets on with Adam. They bonded over nail polish in about ten seconds flat and have barely left each other's sides since. If Allison wasn't so obviously crushing on the eighteen year old Native American builder and Adam wasn't so very gay; Kris would probably have been worried about her.

Anyway, hopefully the part where she clearly liked Adam more than Kris would save her from a gruesome death in however many days Kris had left.

On Kris's other side, Adam is lying on his back. His eyes are shining faintly in the not-darkness of streetlights and passing cars. During the day, Kris barely sees him. He knows Adam is close—a loose beam once slipped from the ceiling towards Kris's head but mysteriously changed direction in mid-air to career into a wall instead—but they don't work together. It's almost like Adam is trying to forget that Kris exists.

Kris curls his fingers over the blackened palm and wishes he could do the reverse.

"If you were awake," Kris says, so softly he can barely hear himself. "We could talk."

Adam rolls onto his side so his back is directed at Kris.

The site has an architect—Kara—and a civil engineer—Simon—who spend eighty percent of their time arguing and the other twenty percent ordering around a team of hired building contractors. So far, the most the volunteers have had to do is fetching and carrying, putting together IKEA standard furniture and frequent coffee runs.

If Kris is there, Adam ignores any and all requests to assist—just turns his cool gaze on Kris as if to say _make me._ If Kris is somewhere else, he might lie on the floor of the rooms on the 12th floor and hear below him Adam and Allison laughing about something or another while they attempt to follow furniture directions.

There's a globe in what will one day be the reception area. Sometimes Kris walks downstairs and sees Adam spinning it with a single clawed finger.

"I can't sleep," Kris says, to Adam's back. "I keep thinking and overthinking. I'm thinking about what you're planning and why you hate me. I don't know how to predict your moods or what I can do to help. I'm wondering where you want to go and why you're in Los Angeles."

The silence drags for a moment, then Adam shifts around to give Kris the full glory of his unimpressed Look. "I thought we were building a homeless shelter," he says, in the tones a normal person might use to say 'I thought we were drowning puppies.'

Kris rolls over so they're face to face. "That's why I'm here. But you—you could click your magical demon fingers and be halfway around the world."

"I have to stay with you, keep you from getting yourself killed by incompetents."

Kris almost asks what would happen to Adam if Kris was, but that's the kind of question that gets him ignored all over again. "You could grab me and click us both."

"You'd order me back," Adam says, but he doesn't exactly sound sure.

"No," Kris says. "I wouldn't."

Adam meets his eyes for a moment longer, then rolls over again so Kris can't see his face.

"I would like to stay here," Kris says. "But if you weren't bound—you could tell me where you'd go."

He doesn't expect Adam to reply, is even closing his eyes and hoping to fall asleep quicker now, when a soft voice rises from Adam's bed. "Finish up in Vegas. Then, who knows. Europe, maybe. Paris. A war ground is always a good time, maybe find one. Lie in a different bed every night, silk sheets and champagne."

Kris pulls his old sleeping bag up a bit closer to his chin. "This isn't quite what you're used to, I suppose."

Another long silence. "No," Adam says. "I've never had this before."

It sounds like the end of a conversation. Kris bites down on the urge to keep pressing until Adam is fed up of him again. "After this building is finished," he says instead. "I'll get another job, we can save up for flights. You can choose where we go."

No reply from the other bed.

Kris sighs, and rolls over to return to the endless task of trying to sleep. "I'd like to see Paris."

*

Allison sits down next to him on the camp bed which makes it creak somewhat alarmingly. "I think," she says, slowly like she's been planning this conversation for a long while. "You should tell me what's going on."

"What did Adam tell you?"

"That you made him do it." She passes him a paper bag from the sandwich box. "And you did, didn't you? I tripped and then I heard you shout."

"I think he would have done it anyway." Adam had been moving even as Kris opened his mouth—Adam was moving the moment Allison's foot caught an unsecured beam right next to the stairwell. The magic only caught her after Kris's desperate 'saveher' but everything had happened so quickly it could have been coincidence. "He likes you."

"A demon likes me," Allison says. "I don't know whether to be flattered or terrified." She opens a second bag of sandwiches in her own lap. "He protects you as well, doesn't he? There was that beam that fell, and every time you walk across one of the rope bridges he gets all distracted like he's making sure you don't slip."

"Something happens to him if I get hurt. That's why he has to follow me around all the time, that's why he's here at all. Did he tell you about the binding?"

"He said something about having to obey your every order." She looks sideways at him. "He seemed more confused than angry, though."

"Did he say he was going to kill me?"

Allison nods. "Seven hundred and forty days, give or take. Do I want to know why you thought binding him was a good idea?"

"He was going to kill me." Kris shakes his head. "I was just—scared, I guess. Scared to fight him, scared to die. I thought buying more time would solve all my problems. But now I'm just following him everywhere and every time I talk to anyone I think he's going to add them to his list of people he can use to get his revenge on me."

"That makes me feel a lot better," Allison deadpans. "Thanks for your words of reassurance, I will sleep much easier now."

Kris manages a half laugh, pulling her into a one-armed hug. "He likes you."

"Yeah," she says, leaning her head on his shoulder. "He liked you too, and look how that's working out."

At that exact moment, Simon has to lean his head in and call them both over, Allison to supervise a shipment of paint and Kris to hold a ladder for the plasterers.

"I'm going home tonight," Allison says as they stand up. "I need time to think."

"Stay away from unguarded stairwells," Kris says and she manages a small smile.

*

The building empties around six pm, when Allison's Mom picks her up from outside, Kara and Simon drive off in opposite directions despite living in exactly the same neighbourhood, and the builders gather their tools and wave a goodbye to Kris, Adam and the three guys sharing a room on the top floor.

They have a little gas cooker on the ground floor, where they reheat whatever Allison's Mom brought this week. Tonight it's a pasta dish of sorts, penne mixed in with bacon and mushrooms in a cheese sauce. Adam doesn't come down, not while they eat or afterwards to trade stories and fill the time. When Matt asks where he is, Kris shrugs and says maybe he has a headache.

He goes up early. Adam is in their room, leaning against the window as the sounds of the city wash over him. "Did you mean what you said to Allison?"

Kris stops in the doorway. "That I didn't think you would kill her? Yes, feel free not to disillusion me."

"No-" Adam turns on the spot, the lights outside silhouetting his form perfectly all the while failing to illuminate his face. "About Vegas. You thought I was going to kill you, there and then."

Kris's hand falls short before he can reach the light switch. "You were," he says, slowly, because that isn't—that's not up for debate. It's a fact.

"I—" Adam runs a hand through his hair, sending sparks falling like rain to the floor. "Not then." He sits down on the end of his bed, the light from the window catching on the line of his jaw, the faint confusion in his eyes. "Not in Vegas. I was going to show you the world."

Kris takes a few steps further into the room. "You wanted to drain my blood."

"Drink," Adam corrects. "A few drops, a mouthful. I was going to take you to the furthest reaches of the earth, to the most beautiful sites in creation. I would drink from you in Paris, in Tokyo, in Cairo. We could travel anywhere between heartbeats, dance in a shack in Hawaii and on the back of a bull in Spain."

"I would still die."

Adam shrugs. "Maybe not in three years. Maybe not in ten. I once kept a boy for twenty years, he was like you."

"Like me?"

"Kind. Beautiful." Adam's mouth curves into a nostalgic smile. "Impossible to reason with. He played the lyre for the sheep before I met him, and afterwards we performed for the king."

Kris walks further into the room, towards Adam. "I would rather not live like that, following behind until you got tired of me."

"You'd rather—what? Squander all my powers for a few years and die painfully for it?"

"I'd rather be free," Kris says.

Adam looks at him, eyes bright blue and searching. "So would I."

And then Adam's kissing him.

The last time—well the last time Kris was shaking from blood loss, tense and running through lines of incantation in his head at the same time as the litany of _you need him to say yes, you need him to say yes._ The last time Adam tasted of copper blood—Kris's blood. The last time clothes were vanishing into smoke and Kris was wondering how far it would have to go before he could trick Adam into consenting. There were a thousand thoughts running through his head and none of them were how Adam could be gentle.

But he can. He is, his hands tugging Kris closer are light as hands cupped to catch butterflies, scared they'll spook and fly away. When he thought—all the times he thought—he figured he would have to fight for it. Stand on his toes, pull Adam's head towards him. But Adam leans down, Adam's mouth catches his in a question— _may I...?_

Adam tastes cool, clear, spring water on a hot day and it must be intentional—everything with Adam is intentional—but Kris couldn't tell you what it means. The last time, Adam was teeth and blood. This time he kisses close-mouthed, rests hands on Kris's hips—not pulling him closer, not pushing him away.

This time he's whispering, "Why don't you ever take what you want?" as he presses up against Kris's erection and leans in to kiss him again.

Kris runs fingers through Adam's hair, watches flames surge up from every touch and sparks fall from his fingertips. "My Grandma always told me that mothers are magic, I should always bind my demons and something given is always better than something taken."

Adam lets out a choked sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. "If I ever meet your grandma, I'm going to punch her or kiss her. Maybe both."

"She could be into that," Kris says. "Real unique woman, my grandma."

Adam presses his face into Kris's neck, breathes him in. "Don't talk about your grandma when we're having sex, okay?"

Kris runs his hand through Adam's hair. "Are we doing that now?"

"No." Adam wraps his arms a little tighter, his hands notably dropping to cup Kris's ass. "But make a note for the future." He holds still for a long moment, then seems to pull himself together, taking one last kiss before stepping away. "Did your grandma forget to teach you the part about giving commands?"

"That would be my mom," Kris says, watching Adam kick retreat towards his own bed. "She was a big fan of the asking and the pleases and thank yous. She said you can steal resentment, but you have to earn respect."

Adam is still for a heartbeat, his back to Kris, then he shakes his head a little. "I'm still going to kill you."

Kris nods, lying down on his bed to stare up at the ceiling. "Never doubted it for a moment."

"Can we go to Paris?"

"As soon as the building's done, we can go wherever you like."

There's a pause then, "Okay," Adam says, in the tones of one plotting something that Kris isn't at all sure he's going to enjoy. "As soon as the building's done."

*

Its two more weeks before Allison comes back, and when she does it's in the evening with a big Tupperware box of soup and a basket of home baked bread. Adam stands up as soon as the car rolls up, disappearing from the small group of guys sitting around the gas fire with Kris's guitar.

Kris doesn't know what he says, or if he even needs to say anything, but he walks back in with Allison beside him, if not quite as comfortable as they used to be then at least she doesn't seem at all scared of him. The other guys cheer her arrival—since they didn't see her fall three storeys down the half-finished stairwell then get caught in thin air and fly back up again, it was much harder to explain her spontaneous vacation. They all have her number, but Kris had been trying not to use it.

He also had to try really hard to not be grateful she wasn't taking up her bed in their room anymore. Adam was the last person Kris would have pegged as a 'take it slow' kind of guy, but the evening make-outs and the sleeping curled up against Adam's chest would probably have been put on hold if Allison was still in the room.

It's not like Kris is going to get a girlfriend—or even a human boyfriend—with Adam following his every move. Safer to date Adam, biting back the desire to beg for more every time Adam got so close and then pulled back. Kris is starting to get accustomed to finishing every night in the company of his right hand, knowing that Adam is just outside the door.

But he doesn't ask, and Adam doesn't tell and the building keeps coming together agonisingly slowly. Even now, Adam uses Allison as a buffer—pushing her to sit down between him and Kris so she can pull him into a hug over his guitar. "Are we doing karaoke? Did you save all the cool stuff for after I was gone, because if so you all suck."

When she leans back, Adam loops an arm around her shoulder. As he does so, his shirt shifts a little so through the opening Kris can see the blackened mark on his chest where the binding took hold. It's a little reassurance. "Play _Alone,_ " Adam says, pushing Allison forward a little. "She'd sound badass on it."

She laughs, punching in him the arm. "No, play something upbeat. I want to have fun, I missed you guys."

Kris shrugs and starts picking out a reggae-esque rhythm in the familiar chord patterns. " _I hear the ticking of the clock, man, I'm lying here—_ " he has to stop when everyone in arm's reach punches him, but they're laughing—even Adam's smile seems genuine.

"Give me the guitar," Allison says. "You have forfeited all right to it due to lack of taste."

Kris laughs, but lets her steal it and slide the strap over one shoulder. She has to shift a little to do so, and as she does Adam moves around behind her to reclaim the spot just behind Kris. "You could tell me what you said to her," Kris asks as softly as he can, while Allison starts picking out power chords.

Adam shrugs—so close that Kris can feel the movement against his back. "She was just scared, it's reasonable." He pokes Kris in the lower back with one finger. "Most people are, you know. They don't just pull off a binding spell and then wander off to do whatever boring shit they were planning anyway."

Kris leans back to rest against Adam's chest. "You don't think I'm scared of you?"

"I think the devil himself could jump out of the fire and you'd have him handing out flyers and rattling charity buckets while everyone else was still shitting themselves." He pauses. "Allison's good."

Kris knew she was good—she sings while she works and while she cooks and, on one memorable occasion, while she sleeps—but standing in the firelight with Kris's guitar providing a backing track so light it's barely there, her voice soars. She doesn't look sixteen, belting out _natural woman_ with her red hair shining behind her she looks like a fucking rock star.

"Shame to waste talent like that," Kris says.

"She said that about you," Adam says softly, but before Kris can turn around to chase him up on it Allison is finishing in a long drawn out note and throwing the guitar back to him.

"I think Adam needs to sing something, or the two of you will just sit there cuddling all night."

Matt laughs and cheers once. "Be glad you weren't here the last two weeks," he says. "Obnoxiously romantic does not even cover it. Spare some thought for the single guys in the room."

_We're not romantic,_ Kris thinks instinctively. _We're just... making the most of our time._ But if he said that it would require explanations, and it's easier to let them believe whatever they like.

"Kris," Allison says, drawing out the 'I' far longer than necessary. "Tell Adam to sing."

Kris glances sideways at Adam. "It would be nice," he says.

Adam rolls his eyes, but pushes Kris forward so he can stand up. "Do you know Mad World? The Gary Jules version?"

It takes Kris a minute, picking out notes and then chords and then the right pattern of strings up and down but it's not so complicated he can't figure it out. "We could give it a shot."

And Adam. Well, _Adam_.

Kris could have sworn he'd heard Adam sing before—he used to hum along with Kris's guitar in the motel in Vegas, sometimes he joined in with Allison on a word or two while they worked. Kris remembers thinking that Adam would have a nice tone if he didn't insist on ignoring whatever Kris was playing and just softly singing along with whatever words he wanted to.

But this—this has _power_ behind it. Every notes is perfectly restrained, but it's like a wild stallion elegantly carrying out dressage. The power is there, but it's _tamed_ , it's _controlled._ The demons that kidnapped Kris mentioned Adam singing in a casino to drive the patrons wild and now Kris can believe it. Adam has the kind of voice that drives you wherever he wants you to go, and holds you there—captivated—listening to it.

As the last note rings out, Kris puts his guitar to one side and pulls Adam down to kiss him, like he can swallow up the last echoes of the song still ringing through the air. He kisses Adam like his voice is a delicacy that Kris can try, taste, map out. As though he could steal the music right from the source.

"Get a room!" Matt shouts, as a bread roll catches the side of Kris's head.

When he moved back, Adam is staring down at his face as though he's never seen it before. "Kris-"

"Get a room that preferably isn't the one you share with me," Allison adds. "As much as I am pro-equality, I am also in favour of sleep."

Adam tears his gaze away from Kris with what seems to be considerable effort. He looks at the half-plastered walls around them, the small crowd at the gas fire, then seems to decide something. "Allison, Kris. Could you both come outside for a minute?"

"This isn't going to be weird, is it?" Allison asks, already pushing herself to her feet.

Adam is looking back down at Kris, shadows shifting behind his eyes. Kris meets his gaze for a moment, then slowly stands—picking up his guitar as he does so. "I'll need my bag," he says.

Adam nods, doesn't seem at all surprised that Kris has figured him out. "It's outside."

"See you in a minute," Matt says, reaching for the soup. "Allison, close your eyes, look the other way and sing really loudly if you need us."

Allison gives him the finger, slipping beside Kris to follow Adam outside. "What's happening here?" she asks in a low voice.

Kris shrugs, watching Adam back rippling a little and his hair blow in an invisible wind. "I think someone got tired of waiting."

*

They end up on the street directly opposite the building, where Kris's backpack is sitting—fully packed and ready to go—on the sidewalk. "When I say one," Adam says, taking their hands in his. "I want you both to blink."

"Is this one of those demon things?" Allison asks, looking up at the building. All the exterior walls are done now, but the reception area is still an empty shell, higher up the window frames have no windows in them and the whole place still gives off a vague sense of derelict ruin.

"Three... two... one." Kris closes his eyes at the exact moment Adam's hand squeezes a little tighter. When he looks again a half-second later, his mouth falls open.

The building looks exactly as Kara kept failing to describe it to them. The curtains are closed on all the windows, right up to the top, with golden light spilling out around the edges. The sign over the door is two feet high— _No Boundaries, shelter and support centre—_ over a glass front. Just inside, Kris can see Matt standing at the reception desk talking to a young girl with a torn up T-shirt, clutching a plastic bag to her chest like a lifeline.

"What—" Allison starts, pulling her hand free to stumble forwards a little. "How—Did you do that?"

Adam shrugs his shoulders. "It was always going to be done, I just messed the timeline around a bit."

"But who built it? How long has it _been_ there?"

"I guess we built it?" Adam tilts his head a little, like he hadn't even thought about it before. "If the universe comes poking around, just tell her we did it really quickly. It should be fine, she doesn't do time well on a small scale." He tugs them both to the side so a boy can dart across the road to the door. "I think it's been up and running for about a month now. It's getting a reputation, doing everything you wanted it to do."

Kris squeezes Adam's hand tight. "Thank you."

"I didn't do it for you," Adam says, although it sounds more like habit than truth. "I was just—bored of building it."

"And you didn't want to walk around Nashville all day, and you happened to stumble on the tickets for the party and the mountain of paperwork was sorted into organised piles when you got there."

Adam nods, the movement seeming to somehow throw his whole body off balance. "Exactly—" he stumbles forward, his knees both buckling at once and his hand closing on Kris's like a vice. "I—I'm tired?"

And then he's collapsed on the ground.

*

Kris can't get his thoughts in order. Allison is still there, talking a mile a minute about maybe calling an ambulance—do ambulances even service non-humans? Should they call a vet?—or her Mom or wondering if they should move him or just talking because she seems to have forgotten how to cope otherwise.

Kris can't even get his thoughts together enough to make a sound. He's just staring at Adam's completely still form trying to remember if Adam ever needed to breathe, if he did it regularly, if blowing air across kisses on Kris's neck was just a making out thing or actual necessity.

Kris has done so many first aid training courses he should be excellent in this kind of situation but Adam doesn't fit into any of the categories he learned about. Any minute now someone's going to come out of the shelter and what will they do when they don't find a pulse?

And all the while running through the back of his head is a tiny voice pointing out that Kris _knew_ Adam was getting more tired. He knew Adam wasn't being fed, he knew Adam was weakening but he let Adam do this anyway. He let Adam because he was tired of hauling wood back and forth, tired of sleeping on camp beds, because he _wanted_ to go to Paris and maybe have Adam steal them a hotel room where the walls would keep the sound in.

He was selfish, and stupid, and if it wasn't for the bond Adam wouldn't even be here.

Allison crouches down next to him. She's breathing deep, trying to hold herself together like she shouldn't have to— _Allison is sixteen for Christ's sake Kris pull yourself together—_ but her hands are shaking. "What do we do?"

Kris shakes his head. "I don't know. I don't—"

As soon as he lost consciousness, Adam's leather jacket and leather trousers faded. He's wearing a black T-shirt so old it's more like grey, the _Metallica_ logo faded to almost nothing and an old pair of black jeans. Kris smooths down the fabric with the heel of his hand, feeling the contours of Adam's side beneath it.

Adam's arms have freckles. Kris would never have called that. Underneath all the illusions and the posturing and the fear, Adam is old jeans and freckles. "He wasn't eating," Kris says. "I mean, he couldn't. I stopped him." He looks up at her. "He was getting more tired every day. I should've noticed, I should've done something."

"There's soup," Allison starts, turning her gaze back to where the gas fire and the rolls used to be. "I mean—there was." She looks down at Adam's still form. "If the building's built, why am I here? Where does my Mom think I am?"

"I don't know." Kris reaches for his back pack. Everything's been stuffed in it entirely at random, so he ends up upending all his worldly possessions onto the street. "I think we were outside the magic. That's why we had to close our eyes; if no one saw the building magically appear, who's to say it actually did." Finally—right at the bottom—he finds his shaving kit. "Can you hold his mouth open?"

"Do you have a plan?" Allison says, as he pulls out a pack of spare razor blades.

"Yes," Kris says. "But it probably isn't a good one." The scar on his arm has barely healed up, but he only needs to cut open a bit of it—with Allison holding Adam's mouth wide Kris opens the cut a little.

He doesn't stop to think about it hurting, just presses his wrist against Adam's mouth so the blood drips in. Allison moves around carefully, shielding him a little from the other side of the street and Kris takes a moment to thank God and Heaven and _Adam_ that he waited until midnight to carry out this plan and the streets are mostly deserted.

"He's not responding," Allison says. "I don't know how to make him swall-"

Adam's eyes snap open, his throat moving once, twice, his tongue flashing out to catch the drips on his lower lip. "Kris," he whispers, one hand scrabbling to catch hold of Kris's wrist. "Kristopher."

"What do I do?" Kris asks desperately, squeezing Adam's hand tight even as Adam's grip loosens. "Adam, _tell me what to do._ "

"My phone," Adam says, already slumping back on the pavement. "In my—Brad. Call—" His eyes fall shut again and this time when Kris presses his wrist back against Adam's mouth, there's no movement at all.

"Who's Brad?" Allison asks, holding Adam's phone up between two fingers.

Kris closes his eyes, pictures two guys one in fishnets and one in shorts both strong enough to throw him over their shoulders and carry him away. "Another demon."

Allison hesitates over the call button. "You mean one of the ones who _isn't_ under orders not to hurt anybody?"

"Yeah."

She looks from the phone to Kris then back again. "Do I make the call?"

Kris drags a hand through his hair. "You should go, get as far away from here as possible. I'll call him."

"So that's a 'yes' then," Allison says, and hits the green button.

*

Kris wakes up when sunlight falls across his face. His first thought is _Adam_ closely followed by _why am I not wearing a shirt?_

The backs of his eyelids seem to hold no answers, so he opens his eyes. He's lying on a carpet, staring up at a white ceiling adorned with the kind of unnecessary flourishes that come from particularly fancy apartments or particularly expensive hotels. When he sits up and takes in the fire escape map on the door and the furniture carefully chosen to match the carpet, the walls and the bed sheets; he goes with hotel.

There's a band aid on his arm, over the bottom of the twisted white scar, and his head is spinning a little. More importantly, Adam is nowhere in sight. "Adam?" He tries to stand up but the spinning turns into a sharp stab of pain through his skull and he stumbles down onto his knees again. "Adam!"

"He's fine," says someone behind him, in a voice that sends shivers of recollection down his spine. "We gave him more of your blood, a zap of magic and stuck him in a casino for a few hours to keep him ticking over."

Kris turns slowly on his knees. There's one double bed in the room, and on it is sitting one of the two demons who grabbed him before. This one has short brown hair, an attempt at some kind of fashionable beard and a lime green string vest. He's filing his nails with what must be a nail file but looks more like a knife. "Brad?"

Brad sniffs, examining his nails closely. "You can call me Cheeks."

"I thought Adam couldn't drink my blood."

"Adam can't hurt you without hurting himself in the process, I—on the other hand—can do whatever I want. Particularly if it involves draining a litre or so from the human who decided to starve my best friend."

Kris looks around the rest of the room. His backpack is sitting on the desk, the contents strewn around it. The bathroom door is sitting open, so he can see into the empty room beyond. "Where's Allison?"

"The redhead?" Brad says, lip curling a little. "She's still alive. She might even stay that way."

"Adam won't kill her," Kris says, the words coming out with a certainty that almost surprises him except... Adam won't. There's just no way.

Brad smiles a bright, getting-away-with-murder smile. "As you will come to understand, Kristopher Neil Allen. I am not Adam. Adam is a romantic, but me—I'm more of a pragmatic kind of guy."

Kris has a headache and his wrist hurts and he's been kidnapped by demons for the second time in his life. He'd rather if Brad could kill him or switch to shorter words. "What does that mean?"

"It means Adam lets himself get hurt, and I hurt people. Adam is what we in the denizens-of-Hell business like to call a bit of a sap. He gets attached to people, and then his feelings get hurt and then people get hurt. There was this guy in Japan—"

"The Japanese man who ordered Adam into his bed every night," Kris says. "And when the thousand days were up, Adam killed him. I know this story, I know far too many of Adam's stories."

"Adam didn't kill him," says Brad, tossing the silver nail file so it catches the light across the point. "And in the beginning, he didn't _order._ This was way back in the day when sorcerers were ten-a-penny and we were constantly on watch for anyone trying to get us to _consent_ to things. I don't remember the man's full name, but Adam calls him Jiro, and he didn't do any ordering in the beginning. He _asked._ He asked with compliments and with flowers and with music. He asked with cherry blossom and promises and so many poems I wanted to throw up but of course Adam lapped it all up, Adam fell in _love_."

It doesn't take a genius to see this story. "And Jiro bound him."

"Of course. A second son looking for more power, saw the perfect opportunity and snatched it. One thousand days forcing a demon to do his bidding to the last letter, ignoring the heartbreak and the rage he unleashed." Brad's smiles are shark like, cold as ice. If Adam was eerie prowling Kris's bedroom when they first met, Brad is a thousand times more unsettling. "Adam didn't kill him, I did. Adam had barely been bound three weeks, and I made that man wish he'd never even heard our names. If you think Adam's punishments are bad, I promise you he's got _nothing_ on me."

"I thought you couldn't hurt me while he was bound."

Brad curls his lip into a sneer. "Killing you kills him, sure. But demons don't have to stay dead. All that effort Jiro put in, months of _wooing_ and writing and pretending he _liked_ it, all for that one moment when Adam was distracted, when his guard was down. That's all it takes to trick a demon into service." He looks up. "You should know. That's how you did it."

Kris looks down at the black mark on his palm. "I was trying to save myself, I didn't mean to trick him like... that."

"Didn't stop you taking advantage of him now," Brad slides off the bed to advance towards him. "What's your plan, convince him to love you enough that he'll give you another thousand days? You can forget that one right off, he may be naive but he's not _stupid._ "

Kris pushes himself back up to his feet. On a level, he's about the same height as Brad so they can see directly eye to eye. "I don't know what he's told you about me, but I'm not _using_ him for power or armies or whatever else it is you all seemed to hate so much about being bound."

"Oh he's told us everything. He's told us that you build houses for homeless children and you can't not be nice to anybody in the whole world and you're so _nice_ you endanger yourself to do it." Brad takes another step closer, still spinning the nail file between his fingers. "And I really _fucking_ hope that you are as good as he thinks you are because if this is some elaborate ruse, you are going to _wish_ that he had killed you in Vegas. You're going to wish that everything he ever threatened to do to you is done all at once to you and everyone you care about because if I have to come after you—and I _will_ come after you—then-"

The door bursts open so Allison and Adam can cannon into the room, closely followed by the other demon from Adam's kidnap—a taller guy in a striped jumper with blonde hair falling over one eye. He raises a hand as though to wave hello just as Adam completely fails to stop his momentum and barrels into Kris's stomach.

They end up on the floor with Adam on top, Kris winded and Allison laughing. Adam's big blue eyes are staring across every inch of Kris's face as though to make absolutely a hundred percent sure it's him. "I felt you wake up," Adam says. "Then you got scared. Are you okay?"

Kris reaches up to touch Adam's face, run his fingers down to the pulse that Adam doesn't have and the horns that he does—poking up out from his hair like mushrooms. "You have freckles," he says, even though Adam's skin is back to looking flawless and mark free. "They were cute."

"I'm not cute," Adam says. "I'm fierce and evil. Fire and brimstone and all that jazz."

"I never thought of jazz as evil," Kris says. "Chaotic neutral, maybe. It just depends on how you use it. I would really like it if you didn't kill my Mom."

Adam lets out a low whimper that's supposed to be a laugh and buries his face in Kris's neck. "I'm not going to kill your mom. She sent the cookies in New York City. I'm going to enslave her and make her bake me cookies for the rest of eternity." Adam starts to move back, but Kris catches his shoulder with one hand.

"You built a homeless shelter for me."

Is it possible for Adam to look embarrassed? "You were never going to ask, I wanted to go to Paris."

"I would've gone to Paris anyway."

"Yeah, but you would've felt all guilty about it. This way was easier except next time I'm not going to have a fight with the laws of time on an empty stomach." He pauses, looks up at Brad, then back down at Kris. "Apparently a few drops of blood every couple of days is enough, it's only starving yourself that's bad. We can find a hospital or go to a morgue or think of someth-"

"Adam," Kris says, catching Adam's hair in his free hand. "I can spare a few drops." He pulls Adam head forward and kisses him.

A short while later he hears Brad, Tommy and Allison quietly leave the room. "There's a bed right there."

Adam lifts his head up from where he's carefully undoing Kris's shirt buttons. "Do you know where this is?"

Kris has been carefully not thinking about it, but it isn't like it's hard to put together. Fancy hotel, casino. "Vegas. Caesar's Palace? It's not the same room, is it?"

"No." Adam sits back on his legs to Kris can look up. "But it's—I didn't make the best first impression. I liked you but then you tricked me but I really wanted to keep liking you." He drags a hand through his hair. "You kept doing things that made me think you weren't like anyone else, but you still _tricked_ me. I don't trust people very well."

"You don't have to trust me," Kris says. "But if you leave me hanging again, we're going to have issues."

Adam laughs, distractedly but it's still a laugh. "I just mean—I really want you to be who I think you are."

"So you don't want to rule New York City anymore?"

"We could totally rule New York City," Adam says. "Just—we could also feed some orphans. You know. When we want a change of scene."

Kris laughs, lets his head fall back on the carpet. "Brad said he'd kill me if I hurt you, by the way."

"Ally said the same about you. I'm not sure which one I'm more afraid of." He rises to his feet, holding out a hand to pull Kris up. "We should probably take her home at some point."

"Her Mom might get worried," Kris agrees.

"No, I just meant—she's getting on far too well with Tommy. I don't think the world needs that unleashed on it just yet."

Kris laughs, letting Adam tug him towards the bed. "I don't know who you think I am," he says, reaching out to push Adam's hair back from his face. "But I've only ever tried to be me, so I think we can work something out."

Adam leans in to kiss him again.

_Epilogue_

"I'm going to grind your eyeballs into soup," Adam says, as the only person in the group who still has the energy to walk and talk at the same time. "Your eyeballs into soup and your bones into bread and feed it to your mom and she'll say 'oh this soup is really good, what's in it?' and I will say 'Kris and Allison because they are horrible people and liars.'"

Allison pulls out one headphone. "Has he shut up yet?"

"Hey Adam," Kris calls over one shoulder. "Allison says she'd make terrible soup, she's too full of carbs. Also, you're making us hotter, can you threaten to turn us into cold food?"

"I'll make your liver into ice cream," Adam says. "Really good ice cream."

"No," Allison says thoughtfully. "That's somehow worse. I can't believe you talked me out of my two weeks of downtime for this. Two weeks between touring and going into the recording studio is not very long, Kris, not long at all."

Kris grins at her, because it had taken one five minute phone call to convince Allison that she wanted to spend her two weeks in the Amazon hunting down Adam's mythical magic stream of enlightenment. "I'm sorry that we're not all major label recording artists, Miss Platinum in Five Countries."

Allison blushes around her grin, elbowing him in the ribs. "You could be. The two of you could be the most incongruous double act in the business. You could open for my next tour, we'll call you 'one man and his demon'."

"You're worse than Daniel was when we went home for Christmas."

"Do demons celebrate Christmas?"

"Apparently. I got him a hat with holes for his horns and he got me a box of rainbow lube in all different flavours."

Allison elbows him again a little bit harder. "That is more information than I needed to know ever, Kris."

"I had to open it in front of my mom." Kris's parents had taken the 'Adam is fairly reasonable these days' news very well, the 'I'm kind of bi' news better than expected and the 'by the way I'm dating my demon' news by staging an intervention. He got a lecture from his dad about soulless evil demons planning to kill you where you stand, a lecture from his mom on the immorality of dating someone who is bound and can't say no and a lecture from Daniel on the importance of using protection.

But Kris kept dating Adam and visiting home occasionally and after a while everyone started just going with it. Adam has Kris's Mom's mobile number if he feels he's being taken advantage of and Kris's dad makes him carry mace. It kind of works.

Adam catches up with them then, rests his elbow on Allison's shoulder and his chin on Kris's. "I'm bored and my feet hurt. Are we nearly there yet?"

Kris rolls his eyes. "We said the walk would be about five days."

Adam whines. "When this binding runs out I'll make you walk in really uncomfortable shoes until your feet drop off."

"Is this before or after you turn me into ice cream?"

Adam considers it. "After. I want to lick you first."

It's Adam's turn to get Allison's elbow in his ribs. "Is this what you two are like when I'm not with you? Please try to remember that this isn't one of your little lover hikes."

"I remembered," Adam says, rubbing his side. "I soundproofed our tent."

"I don't know whether to thank you or tell you never to talk to me again." Allison and Adam fall into step together, somehow going from Kris and Adam's utter lack of propriety to how many dancers Allison wants on her next tour and what kind of album she's planning to release. Kris drops back a little, checking the map around his neck against the landmarks he can see.

The landmarks that are getting larger far quicker than they have any right to. Kris drops the man back against his chest and rolls his eyes, jogging to catch up with the other two. "We're nearly there," he says. "We can make camp on the next ridge."

"Nearly at our first camp spot?" Allison asks, frowning as she looks around and Adam stands behind her trying to look innocent.

"We're nearly at the final camp spot, the one that was five days walk from where we started this morning."

"I said my boots hurt," Adam points out. "We still walked all the way, the way was just much shorter." He pushes through some undergrowth and into the small clearing by a spring which was marked on all their maps as an ideal base camp for the climb up the rocks to the sacred stream of whatever.

Adam's name for the stream changed every time he was asked and he couldn't quite remember what powers it had, but the whole trip was mostly just an excuse to steal Allison away from her management team for a few days so Kris wasn't exactly bothered either way.

"I notice your threats are getting more inventive," Allison says, as they start shucking backpacks and tents and rolling out their shoulders to get used to the lack of weight.

"More inventive," Kris agrees. "Less plausible."

"Hah," Adam says. "You're only saying that because you never met anyone I turned into ice cream before."

"Did they spend a thousand days ordering you to feed them ice cream?" Kris ducks the water bottle that Adam throws at his head. "You know, I could really do with some ice cream. Do you think you could just—" He catches the second—much fuller—water bottle in an outstretched hand and takes a drink. "Thanks for that."

Adam sticks his tongue out. "Go fetch some firewood."

Kris tosses the water back with a grin and heads off into the trees with Allison following behind. He knows that by the time they get back to camp, the tents will be pitched and a fire circle will be set up and Adam will probably have dug dinner out the bottom of one of the rucksacks.

He also knows that Adam could probably accomplish all of that and collecting firewood in approximately thirty seconds, but a system is a system.

"If we got here in one day," Allison says, hopping over rocks to keep up with him. "Does that mean we'll be leaving early?"

"I tried that once," Kris says. "We were out in Namibia with Katy and it only took us three days to do a five day hike so we figured we would just leave early. It ended up taking us eight days to hike back again. Same path, same route. I think Adam just decides how long he wants your company for, and then you're better off just spending it in the camp site." He glances over his shoulder at where they can just see a flash of tent canvas through the trees. "He might stop doing it if we complained, but I'm very bad at laying down the law when it comes to more walking." He holds a branch up so she can duck underneath.

"That was the other thing I was thinking," Allison says, pausing in the undergrowth to look at him. "I mean I never put much thought into it before, but a thousand days is—what—three years?"

"A bit less than, yeah."

Allison nods slowly, and Kris leans against the tree waiting for her to point out that - "It's been nearly four years since New York."

Kris nods, bringing both hands out to hold them palm up before her. One is a little darker than the other, as though he'd spilt ink on it a week or so ago and it hadn't quite scrubbed off fully. "Yeah."

Allison must have expected it, but she still seems surprised. "I thought maybe you bound him again, but you just—" she looks back up at his face. "He still threatens to kill you when the bond runs out, has he not noticed?"

Kris laughs. "I think we both settled into the pattern. It's easier to keep going along with it, you know?"

"He could kill you any day, though."

"He could," Kris agrees. "I mostly just sort of hope he doesn't." He starts moving again, picking deadwood off the ground as he goes. "Anyway, you take three demons on tour with you so it's not like you can talk."

"Tommy's a decent guitar player, and since you insist on expanding Megan's charity to all corners of the Earth, I had to find somebody to fill in." She bumps companionably into his side. "You promised me a song, though."

"I'm working on some things." He stacks the last few logs that will balance onto his pile. "Ready to head back?"

She fills her arms and follows him back into the clearing where Adam is sunbathing on the ground, his wings fully extended behind him. "We saw you unconscious," Allison says, kicking the leathery surface out of the way so she can get to her tent. "We know that the wings aren't actually part of you, you just grow them for special occasions."

"Don't diss the wings," Adam says. "They're badass. You just wish your demons were this cool." He sits up though when Kris drops firewood behind him, the wings folding up like concertinas—smaller and smaller and smaller until there's nothing left but air.

"Hey," Kris says, crawling forward into his lap. "Looks like we have four days of extra time to kill."

Adam grins, curving his hands around the small of Kris's back. "That may have been part of the plan."

Kris leans in to kiss him, and in the heat Adam's mouth is cool, like an iced drink at the end of a summer day. His arms wrap light around Kris's body and Kris feels himself relax down into it.

"I lied," Adam says, as Kris is running his hands across Adam's shoulders, searching for some sign of the wings that were there just moments before.

Kris goes still, then moves back a little so he can see Adam's face. "About what?"

Four years ago, Kris would have said there were no good things about the bond fading. Or if he could jump forwards to now, he would say the best thing was that Kris was still alive.

In reality, it's best that he can stop watching what he says all the time.

"The stream isn't magic," Adam says. "I just like it here. I wanted to bring you here."

"And Allison."

"Ally's great," Adam grins over sideways as Allison comes back out of her tent and glares at both of them. "Have you heard her second album? Ally's going to rule the world."

Kris moves off Adam's lap and lies down on his back in the sun as Allison comes over to remind them that they have their own magically soundproof tent for all the sex that she doesn't want to see. "I'm sorry that I never let you rule the world," Kris says.

Adam laughs and leans down to drop a kiss on his cheek. "You were right. This is better."

Kris smiles, and closes his eyes, letting the conversation wash over him uninterrupted. Sure, this was never part of his plan for his life, his future, his relationships or anything of the sort.

But maybe Adam's right.

It's better.


End file.
